SUPR
Dung beetle genomics and genome annotation
Dnr:

NAISS 2024/22-67

Type:

NAISS Small Compute

Principal Investigator:

Dag Ahren

Affiliation:

Lunds universitet

Start Date:

2024-05-08

End Date:

2025-06-01

Primary Classification:

10613: Behavioural Sciences Biology

Webpage:

Allocation

Abstract

The smell of dung may attract hundreds of dung beetles to the same dung pile. To avoid competition for food at the dung pile, rolling away a dung ball has become an adopted strategy. two species of dung beetle, who are taxonomically closely related, both adopt variants of this ball-rolling strategy. However, K. lamarcki is straight line orienting while S. galeanus is path integrating. The first, following a straight path and the second following a specific path home. How these dung beetles are taxonomically closely related but behaviorally very different has yet to be determined. Looking at several different biological scales, including at the genetic scale, we hope to shed light on the unknown differences behind these behaviours.