Beenome100: Insight into the evolutionary dynamics of genome size and content of bees

Bees represent an evolutionarily and ecologically diverse species-rich group. Despite there being around 4000 species within North America, very few have chromosome-level reference genomes that are publicly available. The mission of Beenome100 is to sequence, assemble, and annotate high-quality reference genomes for 100+ U.S. bee pollinators, with a focus on native bees of conservation, management, and agricultural importance. Here, we present analyses of our Phase I data set, covering up to 6 families and 32 tribes of primarily U.S. native bees. We use comparative genomics approaches to explore evolutionary dynamics of genome structure, including genome size, chromosome number, repetitive element content, gene content, and gene family expansions and/or contractions. Our results elucidate broad patterns of genome evolution across bees, and provide an immense resource for further exploration by the research community.