Zootermopsis nevadensis (Nevada dampwood termite) Assembly and Gene Annotation

About Zootermopsis nevadensis

Zootermopsis nevadensis, the Nevada dampwood termite, is part of the Termopsidae family, and is native to the northwest regions of North America.

Nevada dampwood termites live in colonies with as many as 4,000 members, separated into morphologically distinct castes according to their role in colony; for example, workers are pale brown with large abdomens, swarmers are darker and have wings, and soldiers have large, dark heads and jaws (as shown in the image used on this site). Zootermopsis nevadensis is a model species for social behaviour, which contrasts (in some ways) with that of distantly-related social ant and bee species [1].

As might be guessed from the name, dampwood termites feed mostly on wood that is near water or in close contact with soil, but can attack all wood types. They are less of a pest than subterranean or drywood termites, but all termites are sufficiently closely-related that the Z. nevadensis genome is expected to help find targets for pesticides.

Picture copyright: Alex Wild (alexanderwild.com)

Assembly

The Zootermopsis nevadensis genome was sequenced at the BGI-Shenzen using Illumina technology. The assembly has an average coverage depth of 98.4x and an estimated genome size of 562 Mb, comprising 93,931 scaffolds (85,940 singleton contigs), with an N50 length of 740 kb and a coverage of 493.5 Mb, or 88% of the genome.

Annotation

The protein-coding genes in Ensembl Metazoa were imported from INSDC, and are a subset of the Official Gene Set v2.2 available from the Zootermopsis nevadensis Genome Project. Non-coding RNA genes were added using the Ensembl Genomes pipeline, and BLAST hits and protein features have been computed.

References

1. Molecular traces of alternative social organization in a termite genome.
   Terrapon N, Li C, Robertson HM, Ji L, Meng X, Booth W, Chen Z, Childers CP, Glastad KM, Gokhale K et al. 2014. Nat Commun. 5:3636.

More information

General information about this species can be found in Wikipedia.