Unexpectedly low recombination rates and presence of hotspots in termite genomes

Meiotic recombination is a fundamental evolutionary process that facilitates adaptation and the removal of deleterious genetic variation. Social Hymenoptera exhibit some of the highest recombination rates among metazoans, whereas high recombination rates have not been found among non-social species from this insect order. It is unknown whether elevated recombination rates are a ubiquitous feature of all social insects. In many metazoan taxa, recombination is mainly restricted to hotspots a few kilobases in length. However, little is known about the prevalence of recombination hotspots in insect genomes. Here we infer recombination rate and its fine-scale variation across the genomes of two social species from the insect order Blattodea: the termites Cryptotermes secundus and Macrotermes bellicosus. We used linkage-disequilibrium-based methods to infer recombination rate. We infer that recombination rates are less than 1 cM/Mb in both species, which is lower than the average metazoan rate. We also observed a highly punctate distribution of recombination in both termite genomes, indicative of the presence of recombination hotspots. We infer the presence of full-length PRDM9 genes in the genomes of both species. We also find that recombination rates in genes are correlated with inferred levels of germline DNA methylation. The finding of low recombination rates in termites indicates that eusociality is not universally connected to elevated recombination rate. We speculate that intense selection among haploid males promotes high recombination rates in social Hymenoptera. This study is one of the first to indicate the presence of PRDM9-based recombination hotspots in an insect genome.