Exploring the genomic evolution of basal Anisoptera

While aquatic insects have traditionally been underrepresented in genomics research, the number of publicly available Odonata genomes have more than doubled in the past calendar year. Of particular interest is the chromosome-length assembly of the Black Petaltail (Tanypteryx hageni) dragonfly of the family petaluridae. Petaluridae is typically recovered basal to the super family cavalabiata, and is oftentimes found to be sister to Gomphidae depending upon the tree-building method. As a family, petaluridae is estimated to have originated some 150 million years ago, and T. hageni is estimated to have diverged from its sister speces around 70 million years ago. Other species from long-lived lineages tend to have differing numbers of whole genome duplication events and repetitive content than their more recently derived relatives. Here, we determine if these differences are also present in T. hageni, by  comparing the genome of T. hageni to the other complete genome assemblies of Odonata. We found that T. hageni had nearly twice the repetitive content of other Odonata, and demonstrated differing genomic architecture from other Odonata assemblies. We discuss the implications of these results and the future of genomics research in Odonata.