Reference transcriptomes for three species of sacoglossan sea slug

Understanding how species may respond to climate change is of paramount importance. Species that occupy highly heterogenous environments such as intertidal zone estuarine habitats, provide an ideal test case for examining phenotypic and genomic adaptations to different environmental conditions, which may influence their response to rapidly shifting climatic conditions. The California coast is projected to experience changes in both temperature and salinity, which currently vary seasonally and latitudinally. Using comparative transcriptomics, I documented patterns of positive selection between the northern dwelling planktotrophic sacoglossan sea slug Alderia modesta which is remarkably tolerant of low temperatures and low salinities and its southern congener Alderia willowi which exhibits a striking flexibility for larval type in response to seasonally shifting changes in temperature and salinity. Out of over four thousand one-to-one orthologous genes, I found a signal of positive select...