Blind catfish, and closely related surface species, genome sequencing
About one hundred cave catfishes have been described. Most of them are found in the Americas, in particular in South America but a few species also thrive in Central and North America. No genomic approach to decipher cave associated genomic changes, nor to estimate cave colonization periods have yet been carried out, despite high quality genomes have been assembled for the Mexican blindcat Prietella phreatophila and for the Colombian blind catfish Trichomycterus rosablanca. We filled this gap, by additionally sequencing the genomes of four blind and depigmented catfishes from Peru (three Trichomycterus and one Astroblepus), as well as the genomes of four close surface relatives.
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