Spiralian Genomics in a Changing World

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Background

Global climate change will have devastating effects not only on humans, but also on the animals inhabiting our planet. Among animal groups, spiralians encompass diverse animal species represented by a broad range of taxa, including mollusks, annelids, brachiopods, nemerteans, platyhelminths, and several less widely-known phyla. Despite their taxonomic differences, many of them play crucial roles in evolutionary biology and ecology, presenting significantly overlapping avenues of interest in the fields of development, phenotypic evolution, and adaptation to changing environments. While we must do our best to stop climate change, we should also use our resources and knowledge to better understand how animals face this problem, or adapt to changing environments. However, how changes in the environmental conditions may challenge the biological fitness of the second most abundant group of animals on Earth (spiralians) remains little-investigated. Therefore, a catalogue of up-to-date developments on this matter is very timely.

Advances in genomics, computational biology, and cellular and molecular biology techniques allow researchers to better understand how organisms are influenced by, and can adapt to, the increasingly altered environment in which they live. In this thematic volume, we seek to better understand the effects of biotic and abiotic constraints on the cellular, molecular, and physiological fitness of spiralian animals and how these factors translate to the persistence of organisms. Therefore, this Research Topic, 'Spiralian Genomics in a Changing World', is intended to home a wide spectrum of studies on the molecular and cellular aspects of climate adaptation, mitigation, and resilience that aim to make direct and/or predictive links to the adaptation of spiralians to changing environments. By doing so, we expect to provide new insights into how spiralians will respond to climate change going forward. We aim to assemble studies addressing this Research Topic from cells to genes and populations, using a wide range of methods, from experimental to genetics and modeling. We are especially interested to hear about newly developed tools as well as well-established approaches used in a novel way.

We welcome manuscripts (reviews, mini-reviews, and original research articles) that deal with a wide range of themes, including (but not limited to):
• Molecular evolutionary studies focusing on representatives of a particular spiralian group.
• Climate change from a spiralian biology perspective.
• Spiralian genome evolution to changing environments.
• Transcriptomic consequences of environmental changes, and their impact on spiralian biology.
• Research showcasing the effect of different time scales of climate condition perturbation on spiralians.
By compiling these research contributions, we expect to provide a platform to discuss more advanced biological questions for future studies exploring changing environments and their impact on spiralian animals.

Keywords: Spiralians, Lophotrochozoa, genomics, transcriptomics, climate change, ecology, development, mitigation, adaptation, resilience

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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