Meeting Abstract
The advent of globalism has been tied to an increase in the spread of destructive invasive species across continents. Among the most prominent of these is Trachemys scripta elegans, commonly known as the red-eared slider. This turtle species is native to slow-moving freshwater ecosystems between Alabama and Northeastern Mexico but its involvement in the pet trade has distributed these turtles all over North America and Eurasia, consequently outcompeting native species. A current study by Dr. Brian Simison et al. uncovered a population of T. s. elegans in the Pecos River of Texas that exhibits introgression from Trachemys gaigeae. This evidence of hybridization opens up the possibility that T. s. elegans acquires adaptive genes from native T. gaigeae populations, which may help explain the expansion of T. s. elegans into an ecosystem unlike that of their native swamps. However, before more thorough population genomic approaches can be used to assess the validity of this hypothesis, a reference genome of T. s. elegans is required. In this study, I drafted several de novo genome assemblies for T. s. elegans and identified the presence and location of over 300 T. s. elegans genes in these data. The quality of this draft could be further improved by acquisition of more short-read sequencing data to increase genome coverage. Current efforts to improve assembly quality include the computational compilation of current assemblies. This contribution to Trachemys population genomics helps provide fundamental insights into the relationship between genomes and their expression into selectable traits, which are important concepts in understanding the mechanisms behind speciation and hybridization.
