Onthophagus sagittarius tissue-specific bulk RNA-seq
Onthophagini horned beetles are an emerging model clade for the study of intra- and interspecific morphological diversification. This project focused on the development of five adult traits in O. sagittarius that vary in the degree of morphological sex differences they exhibit in the focal species and across close relatives: external genitalia, posterior head, anterior head, fore tibia, and elytra. The epithelially-derived tissue primordia corresponding to each trait were dissected from pupae within 12 hours of pupation and prepared for RNA-sequencing. Six male and six female biological replicates were collected from each tissue type. RNA-sequencing was performed on an Illumina NextSeq 2000 with a 50-cycle P3 flow cell over four sequencing runs, generating up to four technical replicates per biological sample.