bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.17.148684; this version posted June 18, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. 1 Endogenization from diverse viral ancestors is common and widespread in parasitoid wasps 2 Gaelen R. Burke 1*, Heather M. Hines 2, Barbara J. Sharanowski3 3 4 Affiliations: 5 1Department of Entomology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30606, USA 6 2Department of Biology and Department of Entomology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, 7 PA 16802 USA 8 3Department of Biology, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816, USA 9 *Author for Correspondence: Gaelen R. Burke, Department of Entomology, University of Georgia, 10 Athens, GA, USA,
[email protected] 11 12 Abstract 13 The Ichneumonoidea (Ichneumonidae and Braconidae) is an incredibly diverse superfamily of parasitoid 14 wasps that includes species that produce virus-like entities in their reproductive tracts to promote 15 successful parasitism of host insects. Research on these entities has traditionally focused upon two viral 16 genera Bracovirus (in Braconidae) and Ichnovirus (in Ichneumonidae). These viruses are produced using 17 genes known collectively as endogenous viral elements (EVEs) that represent historical, now heritable 18 viral integration events in wasp genomes. Here, new genome sequence assemblies for eleven species and 19 six publicly available genomes from the Ichneumonoidea were screened with the goal of identifying novel 20 EVEs and characterizing the breadth of species in lineages with known EVEs. Exhaustive similarity 21 searches combined with the identification of ancient core genes revealed sequences from both known and 22 novel EVEs.