Eckart Stolle

Eckart Stolle
Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change | LIB · Museum Koenig ZMB

Dr.
Research into phenotypic and genomics evolution, molecular ecology / PopGen and conservation genomics in pollinators.

About

73
Publications
34,587
Reads
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Introduction
I'm a biologist with a main interest in functional and evolutionary genetics, sociogenomics and genome evolution. My focus thus far are social insects (e.g. ants, bees, wasps). These insects offer excellent systems to investigate phenotypic plasticity, genetics of novel traits, sex chromosome and genome evolution;under the interplay of recombination, selection and drift. I also have a strong interest in phylogeny and phylogeography, ecology and conservation as well as taxonomy of bees and wasps.
Additional affiliations
April 2017 - December 2019
Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg
Position
  • Assistant Professor
Description
  • General Zoology lab of Prof. Dr Robert Paxton
November 2014 - April 2017
Queen Mary University of London
Position
  • PostDoc Position
Description
  • In the evolutionary genomic and bioinformatics lab of Dr. Yannick Wurm.
October 2010 - March 2014
BioSolutions Halle GmbH
Position
  • Research Assistant

Publications

Publications (73)
Article
Full-text available
The evolution of eusociality is one of the major transitions in evolution, but the underlying genomic changes are unknown. We compared the genomes of ten bee species that vary in social complexity, representing multiple independent transitions in social evolution, and report three major findings. First, many important genes show evidence of neutral...
Article
Full-text available
Abstract Background The shift from solitary to social behavior is one of the major evolutionary transitions. Primitively eusocial bumblebees are uniquely placed to illuminate the evolution of highly eusocial insect societies. Bumblebees are also invaluable natural and agricultural pollinators, and there is widespread concern over recent population...
Article
Full-text available
Author Summary Arthropods are the most abundant animals on earth. Among them, insects clearly dominate on land, whereas crustaceans hold the title for the most diverse invertebrates in the oceans. Much is known about the biology of these groups, not least because of genomic studies of the fruit fly Drosophila , the water flea Daphnia , and other s...
Article
Full-text available
The first generation of genome sequence assemblies and annotations have had a significant impact upon our understanding of the biology of the sequenced species, the phylogenetic relationships among species, the study of populations within and across species, and have informed the biology of humans. As only a few Metazoan genomes are approaching fin...
Article
Full-text available
We present RESTseq, an improved approach for a cost efficient, highly flexible and repeatable enrichment of DNA fragments from digested genomic DNA using Next Generation Sequencing platforms including small scale Personal Genome sequencers. Easy adjustments make it suitable for a wide range of studies requiring SNP detection or SNP genotyping from...
Article
Full-text available
Genome sequencing quality, in terms of both read length and accuracy, is constantly improving. By combining long-read sequencing technologies with various scaffolding techniques, chromosome-level genome assemblies are now achievable at an affordable price for non-model organisms. Insects represent an exciting taxon for studying the genomic underpin...
Article
Full-text available
Metazoa‐level universal single‐copy orthologs (mzl‐USCOs) are universally applicable markers for DNA taxonomy in animals that can replace or supplement single‐gene barcodes. Previously, mzl‐USCOs from target enrichment data were shown to reliably distinguish species. Here, we tested whether USCOs are an evenly distributed, representative sample of...
Article
Full-text available
Background Venoms, which have evolved numerous times in animals, are ideal models of convergent trait evolution. However, detailed genomic studies of toxin-encoding genes exist for only a few animal groups. The hyper-diverse hymenopteran insects are the most speciose venomous clade, but investigation of the origin of their venom genes has been larg...
Preprint
Full-text available
Metazoa-level Universal Single-Copy Orthologs (mzl-USCOs) are universally applicable markers for DNA taxonomy in animals which can replace or supplement single-gene barcodes. While previously mzl-USCOs from target enrichment data were shown to reliably distinguish species, here we tested whether USCOs are an evenly distributed, representative sampl...
Preprint
Full-text available
Bees are major pollinators of flowering plants and thus are important ecosystem service providers for natural habitats and crops. Evolution led to a wide range of adaptations in behaviors, morphology and ecological traits. Many plants rely on specialized bee species for pollination events, and so this interdependence can make them increasingly vuln...
Article
Full-text available
Pathogen spillover is a major threat to biodiversity. Insect pollinators, important providers of the ecosystem service of pollination that are in global decline, are no exception to this threat, with mounting evidence of pathogen spillover from managed into wild bee species in temperate regions. The phenomenon is likely global in scope, though poor...
Preprint
Full-text available
Venoms, which have evolved numerous times in animals, are ideal models of convergent trait evolution. However, detailed genomic studies of toxin-encoding genes exist for only a few animal groups. The hyper-diverse hymenopteran insects are the most speciose venomous clade, but investigation of the origin of their venom genes has been largely neglect...
Preprint
Full-text available
Ant colonies ancestrally contained one queen and her non-reproductive workers. This is also the case for many but not all colonies of the Mediterranean big-headed ant Pheidole pallidula. Indeed, this species also has a derived form of social organization with multiple reproductive queens in the colony. The co-existence of two social forms also inde...
Article
Insects constitute vital components of ecosystems. There is alarming evidence for global declines in insect species diversity, abundance, and biomass caused by anthropogenic drivers such as habitat degradation or loss, agricultural practices, climate change, and environmental pollution. This raises important concerns about human food security and e...
Article
Full-text available
Introgression has been proposed as an essential source of adaptive genetic variation. However, a key barrier to adaptive introgression is that recombination can break down combinations of alleles that underpin many traits. This barrier might be overcome in supergene regions, where suppressed recombination leads to joint inheritance across many loci...
Article
Full-text available
The origin of the western honey bee Apis mellifera has been intensely debated. Addressing this knowledge gap is essential for understanding the evolution and genetics of one of the world’s most important pollinators. By analyzing 251 genomes from 18 native subspecies, we found support for an Asian origin of honey bees with at least three expansions...
Preprint
Full-text available
Long-molecule sequencing is now routinely applied to generate high-quality reference genome assemblies. However, datasets differ in repeat composition, heterozygosity, read lengths and error profiles. The assembly parameters that provide the best results could thus differ across datasets. By integrating four complementary and biologically meaningfu...
Article
Full-text available
Eusocial insect queens are remarkable in their ability to maximise both fecundity and longevity, thus escaping the typical trade-off between these two traits. Several mechanisms have been proposed to underlie the remoulding of the trade-off, such as reshaping of the juvenile hormone pathway, or caste-specific susceptibility to oxidative stress. How...
Preprint
Full-text available
Introgression has been proposed as an essential source of trait adaptation. However, a key barrier to adaptive introgression is that recombination can break down combinations of alleles that underpin many traits. Supergene regions, where suppressed recombination leads to joint inheritance of alleles at many loci, could overcome this challenge. Here...
Article
Full-text available
Supergene regions maintain alleles of multiple genes in tight linkage through suppressed recombination. Despite their importance in determining complex phenotypes, our empirical understanding of early supergene evolution is limited. Here we focus on the young "social" supergene of fire ants, a powerful system for disentangling the effects of evolut...
Article
Full-text available
Supergene regions maintain alleles of multiple genes in tight linkage through suppressed recombination. Despite their importance in determining complex phenotypes, our empirical understanding of early supergene evolution is limited. Here we focus on the young ‘social’ supergene of fire ants, a powerful system for disentangling the effects of evolut...
Article
Full-text available
Supergene regions maintain alleles of multiple genes in tight linkage through suppressed recombination. Despite their importance in determining complex phenotypes, our empirical understanding of early supergene evolution is limited. Here we focus on the young ‘social’ supergene of fire ants, a powerful system for disentangling the effects of evolut...
Preprint
Full-text available
Eusocial insect queens are remarkable in their ability to maximise both fecundity and longevity, thus escaping the typical trade-off between these two traits. In species exhibiting complex eusocial behaviour, several mechanisms have been proposed to underlie the remoulding of the trade-off, such as reshaping of the juvenile hormone pathway, or cast...
Article
Full-text available
Evolutionary transitions to a social lifestyle in insects are associated with lineage-specific changes in gene expression, but the key nodes that drive these regulatory changes are unknown. We examined the relationship between social organization and lineage-specific microRNAs (miRNAs). Genome scans across 12 bee species showed that miRNA copy-numb...
Article
Full-text available
Von 325 für das Bundesland Sachsen-Anhalt nachgewiesene Schwebfliegen-Arten wurden insgesamt 100 einer der Gefährdungskategorien zugeordnet.
Article
Full-text available
Developmental plasticity generates phenotypic variation, but how it contributes to evolutionary change is unclear. Phenotypes of individuals in caste-based (eusocial) societies are particularly sensitive to developmental processes, and the evolutionary origins of eusociality may be rooted in developmental plasticity of ancestral forms. We used an i...
Preprint
Full-text available
Supergenes are genomic regions of suppressed recombination that underlie complex polymorphisms. Despite the importance of such regions, our empirical understanding of their early evolution is limited. The young “social” supergene of the fire ant Solenopsis invicta provides a powerful system for disentangling the roles of evolutionary conflict and t...
Preprint
Full-text available
Evolutionary transitions to a social lifestyle in insects are associated with lineage-specific changes in gene expression, but the key nodes that drive these regulatory changes are largely unknown. We tested the hypothesis that changes in gene regulatory function associated with social evolution are facilitated by lineage-specific microRNA (miRNA)...
Article
Full-text available
Social bees are important insect pollinators of wildflowers and agricultural crops, making their reported declines a global concern. A major factor implicated in these declines is the widespread use of neonicotinoid pesticides. Indeed, recent research has demonstrated that exposure to low doses of these neurotoxic pesticides impairs bee behaviours...
Article
Full-text available
Alkali bees (Nomia melanderi) are solitary relatives of the halictine bees, which have become an important model for the evolution of social behavior, but for which few solitary comparisons exist. These ground-nesting bees defend their developing offspring against pathogens and predators, and thus exhibit some of the key traits that preceded insect...
Article
Full-text available
The evolution of altruism in complex insect societies is arguably one of the major transitions in evolution and inclusive fitness theory plausibly explains why this is an evolutionary stable strategy. Yet, workers of the South African Cape honey bee (Apis mellifera capensis) can reverse to selfish behaviour by becoming social parasites and partheno...
Article
Full-text available
Long-term suppression of recombination ultimately leads to gene loss, as demonstrated by the depauperate Y and W chromosomes of long-established pairs of XY and ZW chromosomes. The young social supergene of the Solenopsis invicta red fire ant provides a powerful system to examine the effects of suppressed recombination over a shorter timescale. The...
Preprint
Full-text available
Alkali bees ( Nomia melanderi ) are solitary relatives of the halictine bees, which have become an important model for the evolution of social behavior, but for which few solitary comparisons exist. These ground-nesting bees defend their developing offspring against pathogens and predators, and thus exhibit some of the key traits that preceded inse...
Preprint
Full-text available
Suppressed recombination ultimately leads to gene loss, as demonstrated by the depauperate Y chromosomes of long-established XY pairs. To understand the shorter term effects, we used high-resolution optical mapping and k-mer distribution analysis in a young non-recombining region of fire ant social chromosomes. Instead of shrinking, the region has...
Data
Table S1. Summary of correspondences between identifiers of sequences produced in this project and previously published sequences, including the number of sequence differences between the two groups. Table S2. Accession numbers of the gene expression data used. “Project” and “SRA” columns indicate NCBI identifiers. The descriptions provided and th...
Data
Figure S1. Density distribution of the p‐values for differential expression between social forms in queens for OBPs (in green) and all other protein‐coding genes (red). The p‐values for OBPs are strongly skewed towards 0. This result is based on the expression levels from the Morandin et al. (2016) dataset. Figure S2. Correspondence between queen...
Article
Full-text available
Variation in social behavior is common yet our knowledge of the mechanisms underpinning its evolution is limited. The fire ant Solenopsis invicta provides a textbook example of a Mendelian element controlling social organization: alternate alleles of a genetic element first identified as encoding an odorant binding protein (OBP) named Gp-9 determin...
Article
Full-text available
Mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I (COI) partial sequences are widely used in taxonomy for species identification. Increasingly, these sequence identities are combined with modelling approaches to delineate species. Yet the validity of species delineation based on such DNA ‘barcodes’ is rarely tested and may be called into question by phenomena suc...
Chapter
Full-text available
The checklist of the hoverflies of Saxony-Anhalt includes 322 Species.
Article
Full-text available
For bees, many roads lead to social harmony Eusociality, where workers sacrifice their reproductive rights to support the colony, has evolved repeatedly and represents the most evolved form of social evolution in insects. Kapheim et al. looked across the genomes of 10 bee species with varying degrees of sociality to determine the underlying genomic...
Article
Full-text available
The shift from solitary to social behavior is one of the major evolutionary transitions. Primitively eusocial bumblebees are uniquely placed to illuminate the evolution of highly eusocial insect societies. Bumblebees are also invaluable natural and agricultural pollinators, and there is widespread concern over recent population declines in some spe...
Article
Full-text available
The shift from solitary to social behavior is one of the major evolutionary transitions. Primitively eusocial bumblebees are uniquely placed to illuminate the evolution of highly eusocial insect societies. Bumblebees are also invaluable natural and agricultural pollinators, and there is widespread concern over recent population declines in some spe...
Article
Full-text available
Myriapods (e.g., centipedes and millipedes) display a simple homonomous body plan relative to other arthropods. All members of the class are terrestrial, but they attained terrestriality independently of insects. Myriapoda is the only arthropod class not represented by a sequenced genome. We present an analysis of the genome of the centipede Striga...
Data
Barcodes without recognition sites. The list contains IonTorrent barcode names (Ion Xpress™ Barcode Adapters 1–96 Kit, Life Technologies, sequences are available there) and barcode sequences published for GBS [5], which do not contain or form a recognition site of TaqI, MseI, MluCI, HaeIII, MspI, HinP1I, MboI, RsaI or Bsh1236I if combined with an I...
Article
Full-text available
Microsatellites, or SSRs, are common and widespread DNA elements in genomes of many organisms. Yet, their dynamics in genome evolution is unclear, whereby they are thought to evolve neutrally. More available genome sequences along with dated phylogenies allowed for studying the evolution of these repetitive DNA elements along evolutionary time scal...
Article
Full-text available
In eusocial insects the production of daughters is generally restricted to mated queens, and unmated workers are functionally sterile. The evolution of this worker sterility has been plausibly explained by kin selection theory [Hamilton W (1964) J Theor Biol 7:1-52], and many traits have evolved to prevent conflict over reproduction among the femal...
Article
Full-text available
The bumblebee Bombus terrestris is an ecologically and economically important pollinator and has become an important biological model system. To study fundamental evolutionary questions at the genomic level, a high resolution genetic linkage map is an essential tool for analyses ranging from quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping to genome assembly...
Data
SSR markers and Blast results. This table lists all used microsatellite markers. For novel SSR markers the GenBank accession numbers, the primer sequences with their annealing temperatures (Ta), the repeat motif, the SSR type (c - composite, p - pure, number indicating the motif length), an approximate size range of the PCR fragment, an approximate...
Data
Mapping data. For each mapped marker (AFLP and SSR) the genetic position on the LG, the distance (interval) to the next (following) marker and the genetic position within the A. mellifera genome (if a homologue was found) is given. Furthermore the linkage phase in the used mapping population is given. Significance (p-value) of segregation distortio...
Data
Synteny. This table shows syntenic marker pairs (intervals/segments) with their location (LG) and interval/segment length (cM) in B. terrestris (B.t.) and the corresponding interval/segment in A. mellifera (A.m.), as well as their ratio.
Data
Homology. This table shows marker pairs (intervals/segments) from the B. terrestris (B.t.) map, of which both markers are located on a matching (see table 2) A. mellifera (A.m.) LG, but rearranged (not paired, hence no synteny). Their LG (B.t.) and interval/segment length (cM, B.t.) is given.
Data
Full-text available
Bombus terrestris linkage map. This plot shows the Bombus terrestris linkage map with absolute marker positions and marker names for each linkage group.
Article
Although pollinator declines are a global biodiversity threat, the demography of the western honeybee (Apis mellifera) has not been considered by conservationists because it is biased by the activity of beekeepers. To fill this gap in pollinator decline censuses and to provide a broad picture of the current status of honeybees across their natural...