Imported Cattle Report, March 2016

The Imported Cattle report monthly by the Department of Agricultural.

Imported Cattle Report, April 2016

The Imported Cattle report monthly by the Department of Agricultural.

Poultry Imported to Iowa, February 2016

The Poultry Imported to Iowa report monthly by the Department of Agricultural.

Poultry Imported to Iowa, April 2016

The Poultry Imported to Iowa report monthly by the Department of Agricultural.

Poultry Imported to Iowa, March 2016

The Poultry Imported to Iowa report monthly by the Department of Agricultural.

Other Imported Livestock Report to Iowa, January 2016

The Other Imported Livestock report monthly by the Department of Agricultural.

Other Imported Livestock Report to Iowa, February 2016

The Other Imported Livestock report monthly by the Department of Agricultural.

Other Imported Livestock Report to Iowa, March 2016

The Other Imported Livestock report monthly by the Department of Agricultural.

Other Imported Livestock Report to Iowa, April 2016

The Other Imported Livestock report monthly by the Department of Agricultural.

Imported Swine Count, January 2016

The imported swine court report monthly by the Department of Agricultural.

Imported Swine Count, February 2016

The imported swine court report monthly by the Department of Agricultural.

Imported Swine Count, March 2016

The imported swine court report monthly by the Department of Agricultural.

Imported Swine Count, April 2016

The imported swine court report monthly by the Department of Agricultural.

Odorant binding proteins of the red imported fire ant, Solenopsis invicta: an example of the problems facing the analysis of widely divergent proteins.

We describe the odorant binding proteins (OBPs) of the red imported fire ant, Solenopsis invicta, obtained from analyses of an EST library and separate 454 sequencing runs of two normalized cDNA libraries. We identified a total of 18 putative functional OBPs in this ant. A third of the fire ant OBPs are orthologs to honey bee OBPs. Another third of the OBPs belong to a lineage-specific expansion, which is a common feature of insect OBP evolution. Like other OBPs, the different fire ant OBPs share little sequence similarity (∼ 20%), rendering evolutionary analyses difficult. We discuss the resulting problems with sequence alignment, phylogenetic analysis, and tests of selection. As previously suggested, our results underscore the importance for careful exploration of the sensitivity to the effects of alignment methods for data comprising widely divergent sequences.