Ecological and evolutionary implications of genomic structural variations

Large genomic segments spanning millions of nucleotides commonly differ between any two genomes, including between monozygotic twins (Bruder et al., 2008). These structural variations (SVs) include deletions, insertions, duplications, inversions, and translocations. SVs have been associated with human genetic diseases (Weischenfeldt et al., 2013), but can also facilitate adaptation (Iskow et al., 2012) and speciation (Noor et al., 2001; Rieseberg, 2001). In this research topic, the contributed articles offer insights into the ecological and evolutionary implications of genomic SVs, emphasizing the advances, limitations, and importance of studying the evolution of structural polymorphisms in model and non-model organisms.