About this Research Topic

Background

'Marine megafauna' encompasses diverse animal species represented by a broad range of taxa, including vertebrates, crustaceans, mollusks, and cnidarians. Despite their taxonomic differences, they present significantly overlapping avenues of interest in the fields of phenotypic evolution and marine ecosystem conservation, as they occur in comparable oceanic environments. Studies on marine megafauna provide molecular-level challenges regarding adaptation to deep-sea lifestyles and marine population dynamics. However, these studies are often technically limited by common difficulties, such as unaffordable genome sizes and low accessibility to elusive, sometimes protected live materials.

This Research Topic, 'Molecular Evolution and Genomics of Marine Megafauna: Methodological Solutions and Key Advances', is intended as a forum for a wide spectrum of influential studies on the molecular evolution of marine megafauna across different classes/phyla. We aim to assemble studies highlighting emerging methodological solutions to tackle common obstacles and provide a platform to discuss more advanced biological questions for future studies. We welcome manuscripts (both reviews and original research papers) reporting a wide range of themes, including molecular evolutionary studies focusing on a particular phenotype of marine megafauna, population size history from a conservation perspective, and genome evolution.

Keywords: deep sea, adaptation, convergence, gigantism, marine megafauna

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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