The mobilome of Dichotomius (Luederwaldtinia) schiffleri

Transposable elements (TEs) are dispersed repetitive DNA sequences found in the vast majority of organisms studied so far. TEs activity has shaped the genome of many different species. In the genus Dichotomius (Coleoptera) TEs have been suggested to be associated with the dispersion and dynamics of other repetitive sequences but limited molecular data for TEs exists so far. Therefore, the objective of this study was to characterize the mobilome of Dichotomius ( Luederwaldtinia ) schiffleri using three different approaches for TEs characterization: RepeatExplorer, dnaPipeTE and RepeatMasker. Phylogenetic trees of conserved TE superfamily were constructed using the maximum likelihood method and included homologous sequences identified in NCBI and Repbase. The mobilome of D. ( L. ) schiffleri is composed of 21 retrotransposon and 22 DNA transposon superfamilies. Phylogenetic reconstruction revealed incongruences between the phylogeny of the elements and that of the host. The characterization of D. ( L. ) schiffleri elements and phylogenetic analyses allowed the identification of putative active elements and potential horizontal transfer events between highly divergent taxa.