Genetics and neurobiology of aggression in Drosophila

Aggressive behavior is widely present throughout the animal kingdom and is crucial to ensure survival and reproduction. Aggressive actions serve to acquire territory, food, or mates and in defense against predators or rivals; while in some species these behaviors are involved in establishing a social hierarchy. Aggression is a complex behavior, influenced by a broad range of genetic and environmental factors. Recent studies in Drosophila provide insight into the genetic basis and control of aggression. The state of the art on aggression in Drosophila and the many opportunities provided by this model organism to unravel the genetic and neurobiological basis of aggression are reviewed

Whole-genome phylogeography of the intertidal snail Littorina saxatilis

Understanding the factors that have shaped the current distributions and diversity of species is a central and longstanding aim of evolutionary biology. The recent inclusion of genomic data into phylogeographic studies has dramatically improved our understanding in organisms where evolutionary relationships have been challenging to infer. We used whole-genome sequences to study the phylogeography of the intertidal snail Littorina saxatilis, which has successfully colonized and diversified across a broad range of coastal environments in the Northern Hemisphere amid repeated cycles of glaciation. Building on past studies based on short DNA sequences, we used genome-wide data to provide a clearer picture of the relationships among samples spanning most of the species natural range. Our results confirm the trans-Atlantic colonization of North America from Europe, and have allowed us to identify rough locations of glacial refugia and to infer likely routes of colonization within Europe. We also investigated the signals in different datasets to account for the effects of genomic architecture and non-neutral evolution, which provides new insights about diversification of four ecotypes of L. saxatilis (the crab, wave, barnacle, and brackish ecotypes) at different spatial scales. Overall, we provide a much clearer picture of the biogeography of L. saxatilis, providing a foundation for more detailed phylogenomic and demographic studies