Untangling Host-Symbiont Coevolutionary History in the High Throughput Sequencing (HTS) Era

Dear Colleagues,

High-throughput sequencing (HTS) and “-omics” datasets play an increasingly prominent role in most subfields of ecology and evolution. One of the areas profoundly impacted by these high-throughput sequencing approaches is the study of host–symbiont coevolution (“coevolution” used here in a broader sense encompassing any comparison of hosts and their symbionts in an evolutionary framework). In recent years, there has been a particular increase in the use of “-omics” datasets to understand how hosts and their symbionts interact over evolutionary time. This work has certainly progressed the field of host–symbiont coevolution, but there remain many avenues yet to be investigated. For example, genomic introgression, which can be easily detected in multi-gene datasets, may impact cophylogenetic reconstructions, but it is poorly studied in host–symbiont systems.

In this Special Issue, we seek to bring together empirical, methodological, or theoretical papers that will advance our overall knowledge of host–symbiont coevolutionary history, especially on cutting-edge topics that utilize HTS data. HTS data include, but are not limited to, genomes/transcriptomes/epigenomes, multi-gene datasets, SNPs, or symbiont-associated microbial metagenomes. Examples of preferential topics include cophylogenetic methods, epigenetics, gene expression, genome architecture, genome evolution, hybridization, microbiomes, phylogenomics, phylogeography, phylosymbiosis, population genomics, and transcriptomics.

The scope is very broad, and we encourage any submissions that are useful to the field of host–symbiont coevolution, including preliminary results or small-scale studies. Additionally, there is an updated deadline for submissions (December 2021). Please do not hesitate to inquire about whether an idea may fit in the Special Issue.

Dr. Jorge Doña
Dr. Andrew D. Sweet
Guest Editors

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