Evolution Letters最新文献

The genetic mechanisms underlying striking axial patterning changes in wild species are still largely unknown. Previous studies have shown that Apeltes quadracus fish, commonly known as fourspine sticklebacks, have evolved multiple different axial patterns in wild populations. Here, we revisit classic locations in Nova Scotia, Canada, where both high-spined and low-spined morphs are particularly common. Using genetic crosses and quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping, we examine the genetic architecture of wild differences in several axial patterning traits, including the number and length of prominent dorsal spines, the number of underlying median support bones (pterygiophores), and the number and ratio of abdominal and caudal vertebrae along the anterior-posterior body axis. Our studies identify a highly significant QTL on chromosome 6 that controls a substantial fraction of phenotypic variation in multiple dorsal spine and pterygiophore traits (~15%-30% variance explained). An additional smaller-effect QTL on chromosome 14 contributes to the lengths of both the last dorsal spine and anal spine (~9% variance explained). 1 or no QTL were detected for differences in the numbers of abdominal and caudal vertebrae. The major-effect patterning QTL on chromosome 6 is centered on the HOXDB gene cluster, where sequence changes in a noncoding axial regulatory enhancer have previously been associated with prominent dorsal spine differences in Apeltes. The QTL that have the largest effects on dorsal spine number and length traits map to different chromosomes in Apeltes and Gasterosteus, 2 distantly related stickleback genera. However, in both genera, the major-effect QTL for prominent skeletal changes in wild populations maps to linked clusters of powerful developmental control genes. This study, therefore, bolsters the body of evidence that regulatory changes in developmental gene clusters provide a common genetic mechanism for evolving major morphological changes in natural species.

The Urban Heat Island Effect (UHIE) is a globally consistent pressure on biological species living in cities. Adaptation to the UHIE may be necessary for urban wild flora to persist in cities, but experimental evidence is scarce. Here, we report evidence of adaptive evolution in a perennial plant species in response to the UHIE. We collected seeds from common dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) individuals along an urban-rural gradient in the city of Amsterdam (The Netherlands). In common-environment greenhouse experiments, we assessed the effect of elevated temperatures on plant growth and the effect of vernalization treatments on flowering phenology. We found that urban plants accumulate more biomass at higher temperatures and require shorter vernalization periods, corresponding to milder winters, to induce flowering compared to rural plants. Differentiation was also observed between different intra-urban subhabitats, with park plants displaying a higher vernalization requirement than street plants. Our results show genetic differentiation between urban and rural dandelions in temperature-dependent growth and phenology, consistent with adaptive divergence in response to the UHIE. Adaptation to the UHIE may be a potential explanation for the persistence of dandelions in urban environments.

The range of hosts a given virus can infect is widely presumed to be limited by fitness trade-offs between alternative hosts. These fitness trade-offs may arise naturally due to antagonistic pleiotropy if mutations that increase fitness in one host tend to decrease fitness in alternate hosts. Yet there is also growing recognition that positive pleiotropy may be more common than previously appreciated. With positive pleiotropy, mutations have concordant fitness effects such that a beneficial mutation can simultaneously increase fitness in different hosts, providing a genetic mechanism by which selection can overcome fitness trade-offs. How readily evolution can overcome fitness trade-offs therefore depends on the overall distribution of mutational fitness effects between hosts, including the relative frequency of antagonistic versus positive pleiotropy. We therefore conducted a systematic meta-analysis of the pleiotropic fitness effects of viral mutations reported in different hosts. Our analysis indicates that while both antagonistic and positive pleiotropy are common, fitness effects are overall positively correlated between hosts and unconditionally beneficial mutations are not uncommon. Moreover, the relative frequency of antagonistic versus positive pleiotropy may simply reflect the underlying frequency of beneficial and deleterious mutations in individual hosts. Given a mutation is beneficial in one host, the probability that it is deleterious in another host is roughly equal to the probability that any mutation is deleterious, suggesting there is no natural tendency toward antagonistic pleiotropy. The widespread prevalence of positive pleiotropy suggests that many fitness trade-offs may be readily overcome by evolution given the right selection pressures.

Microbial evolution is typically studied in monocultures or in communities of competing species. But microbes do not always compete and how positive inter-species interactions drive evolution is less clear: Initially facilitative communities may either evolve increased mutualism, increased reliance on certain species according to the Black Queen Hypothesis (BQH), or weaker interactions and resource specialization. To distinguish between these outcomes, we evolved four species for 44 weeks either alone or together in a toxic pollutant. These species initially facilitated each other, promoting each other's survival and pollutant degradation. After evolution, two species (Microbacterium liquefaciens and Ochrobactrum anthropi) that initially relied fully on others to survive continued to do so, with no evidence for increased mutualism. Instead, Agrobacterium tumefaciens and Comamonas testosteroni (Ct) whose ancestors interacted positively, evolved in community to interact more neutrally and grew less well than when they had evolved alone, suggesting that the community limited their adaptation. We detected several gene loss events in Ct when evolving with others, but these events did not increase its reliance on other species, contrary to expectations under the BQH. We hypothesize instead that these gene loss events are a consequence of resource specialization. Finally, co-evolved communities degraded the pollutant worse than their ancestors. Together, our results support the evolution of weakened interactions and resource specialization, similar to what has been observed in competitive communities.

Darwin and Bateman suggested that precopulatory sexual selection is more intense on males than females, and that this difference is due to anisogamy (i.e., dimorphism in gamete size and number). While a recent paper apparently presents empirical support for this hypothesis, another appears at first sight to present evidence against it. We argue that this is partly due to lack of transparent theoretical predictions, and discuss and analyze sexual selection theory in relation to anisogamy evolution. On one hand, we find that there exists relatively little theory that can directly address all the tested predictions; on the other, the picture painted by current theory indicates that both sets of empirical results broadly match predictions about the causal link between anisogamy and sexual selection, thus reconciling the two apparently opposing claims. We also discuss in a very broad, general sense how anisogamy is expected to affect sexual selection.

The emergence and spread of antibiotic resistance in bacterial pathogens is a global health threat. One important unanswered question is how antibiotic resistance influences the ability of a pathogen to invade the host-associated microbiome. Here we investigate how antibiotic resistance impacts the ability of a bacterial pathogen to invade bacteria from the microbiome, using the opportunistic bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa and the respiratory microbiome as our model system. We measure the ability of P. aeruginosa spontaneous antibiotic-resistant mutants to invade pre-established cultures of commensal respiratory microbes in an assay that allows us to link specific resistance mutations with changes in invasion ability. While commensal respiratory microbes tend to provide some degree of resistance to P. aeruginosa invasion, antibiotic resistance is a double-edged sword that can either help or hinder the ability of P. aeruginosa to invade. The directionality of this help or hindrance depends on both P. aeruginosa genotype and respiratory microbe identity. Specific resistance mutations in genes involved in multidrug efflux pump regulation are shown to facilitate the invasion of P. aeruginosa into Staphylococcus lugdunensis, yet impair invasion into Rothia mucilaginosa and Staphylococcus epidermidis. Streptococcus species provide the strongest resistance to P. aeruginosa invasion, and this is maintained regardless of antibiotic resistance genotype. Our study demonstrates how the cost of mutations that provide enhanced antibiotic resistance in P. aeruginosa can crucially depend on community context. We suggest that attempts to manipulate the microbiome should focus on promoting the growth of commensals that can increase the fitness costs associated with antibiotic resistance and provide robust inhibition of both wildtype and antibiotic-resistant pathogen strains.

Organisms gain by anticipating future changes in the environment. Those environmental changes often follow stochastic trends. The steeper the slope of the trend, the more likely the trend's momentum carries the future trend in the same direction. This article presents a simple biological circuit that measures the momentum, providing a prediction about future trend. The circuit calculates the momentum by the difference between a short-term and a long-term exponential moving average. The time lengths of the two moving averages can be adjusted by changing the decay rates of state variables. Different time lengths for those averages trade off between errors caused by noise and errors caused by lags in predicting a change in the direction of the trend. Prior studies have emphasized circuits that make similar calculations about trends. However, those prior studies embedded their analyses in the details of particular applications, obscuring the simple generality and wide applicability of the approach. The model here contributes to the topic by clarifying the great simplicity and generality of anticipation for stochastic trends. This article also notes that, in financial analysis, the difference between moving averages is widely used to predict future trends in asset prices. The financial measure is called the moving average convergence-divergence indicator. Connecting the biological problem to financial analysis opens the way for future studies in biology to exploit the variety of highly developed trend models in finance.

Reciprocal effects of adaptive radiations on the evolution of interspecific interactions, like parasitism, remain barely explored. We test whether the recent radiations of European whitefish (Coregonus spp.) across and within perialpine and subarctic lakes promote its parasite Proteocephalus fallax (Platyhelminthes: Cestoda) to undergo host repertoire expansion via opportunity and ecological fitting, or adaptive radiation by specialization. Using de novo genomic data, we examined P. fallax differentiation across lakes, within lakes across sympatric host species, and the contributions of host genetics versus host habitat use and trophic preferences. Whitefish intralake radiations prompted parasite host repertoire expansion in all lakes, whereas P. fallax differentiation remains incipient among sympatric fish hosts. Whitefish genetic differentiation per se did not explain the genetic differentiation among its parasite populations, ruling out codivergence with the host. Instead, incipient parasite differentiation was driven by whitefish phenotypic radiation in trophic preferences and habitat use in an arena of parasite opportunity and ecological fitting to utilize resources from emerging hosts. Whilst the whitefish radiation provides a substrate for the parasite to differentiate along the same water-depth ecological axis as Coregonus spp., the role of the intermediate hosts in parasite speciation may be overlooked. Parasite multiple-level ecological fitting to both fish and crustacean intermediate hosts resources may be responsible for parasite population substructure in Coregonus spp. We propose parasites' delayed arrival was key to the initial burst of postglacial intralake whitefish diversification, followed by opportunistic tapeworm host repertoire expansion and a delayed nonadaptive radiation cascade of incipient tapeworm differentiation. At the geographical scale, dispersal, founder events, and genetic drift following colonization of spatially heterogeneous landscapes drove strong parasite differentiation. We argue that these microevolutionary processes result in the mirroring of host-parasite phylogenies through phylogenetic tracking at macroevolutionary and geographical scales.

The evolution of multicellularity represents a major transition in life's history, enabling the rise of complex organisms. Multicellular groups can evolve through multiple developmental modes, but a common step is the formation of permanent cell-cell attachments after division. The characteristics of the multicellular morphology that emerges have profound consequences for the subsequent evolution of a nascent multicellular lineage, but little prior work has investigated these dynamics directly. Here, we examine a widespread yet understudied emergent multicellular morphology: cuboidal packing. Extinct and extant multicellular organisms across the tree of life have evolved to form groups in which spherical cells divide but remain attached, forming approximately cubic subunits. To experimentally investigate the evolution of cuboidal cell packing, we used settling selection to favor the evolution of simple multicellularity in unicellular, spherical Schizosaccharomyces pombe yeast. Multicellular clusters with cuboidal organization rapidly evolved, displacing the unicellular ancestor. These clusters displayed key hallmarks of an evolutionary transition in individuality: groups possess an emergent life cycle driven by physical fracture, group size is heritable, and they respond to group-level selection via multicellular adaptation. In 2 out of 5 lineages, group formation was driven by mutations in the ace2 gene, preventing daughter cell separation after division. Remarkably, ace2 mutations also underlie the transition to multicellularity in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Candida glabrata, lineages that last shared a common ancestor $>$ 300 million years ago. Our results provide insight into the evolution of cuboidal cell packing, an understudied multicellular morphology, and highlight the deeply convergent potential for a transition to multicellular individuality within fungi.

Recent discoveries of sex chromosome diversity across the tree of life have challenged the canonical model of conserved sex chromosome evolution and evoked new theories on labile sex chromosomes that maintain less differentiation and undergo frequent turnover. However, theories of labile sex chromosome evolution lack direct empirical support due to the paucity of case studies demonstrating ongoing sex chromosome turnover in nature. Two divergent lineages (viz. WL & EL) of nine-spined sticklebacks (Pungitius pungitius) with different sex chromosomes (linkage group [LG] 12 in the EL, unknown in the WL) hybridize in a natural secondary contact zone in the Baltic Sea, providing an opportunity to study ongoing turnover between coexisting sex chromosomes. In this study, we first identify an 80 kbp genomic region on LG3 as the sex-determining region (SDR) using whole-genome resequencing data of family crosses of a WL population. We then verify this region as the SDR in most other WL populations and demonstrate a potentially ongoing sex chromosome turnover in admixed marine populations where the evolutionarily younger and homomorphic LG3 sex chromosome replaces the older and heteromorphic LG12 sex chromosome. The results provide a rare glimpse of sex chromosome turnover in the wild and indicate the possible existence of additional yet undiscovered sex chromosome diversity in Pungitius sticklebacks.