Parallelism in eco-morphology and gene expression despite variable evolutionary and genomic backgrounds in a Holarctic fish.

Bibliographic Details
Title: Parallelism in eco-morphology and gene expression despite variable evolutionary and genomic backgrounds in a Holarctic fish.
Authors: Arne Jacobs, Madeleine Carruthers, Andrey Yurchenko, Natalia V Gordeeva, Sergey S Alekseyev, Oliver Hooker, Jong S Leong, David R Minkley, Eric B Rondeau, Ben F Koop, Colin E Adams, Kathryn R Elmer
Source: PLoS Genetics, Vol 16, Iss 4, p e1008658 (2020)
Publisher Information: Public Library of Science (PLoS), 2020.
Publication Year: 2020
Collection: LCC:Genetics
Subject Terms: Genetics, QH426-470
More Details: Understanding the extent to which ecological divergence is repeatable is essential for predicting responses of biodiversity to environmental change. Here we test the predictability of evolution, from genotype to phenotype, by studying parallel evolution in a salmonid fish, Arctic charr (Salvelinus alpinus), across eleven replicate sympatric ecotype pairs (benthivorous-planktivorous and planktivorous-piscivorous) and two evolutionary lineages. We found considerable variability in eco-morphological divergence, with several traits related to foraging (eye diameter, pectoral fin length) being highly parallel even across lineages. This suggests repeated and predictable adaptation to environment. Consistent with ancestral genetic variation, hundreds of loci were associated with ecotype divergence within lineages of which eight were shared across lineages. This shared genetic variation was maintained despite variation in evolutionary histories, ranging from postglacial divergence in sympatry (ca. 10-15kya) to pre-glacial divergence (ca. 20-40kya) with postglacial secondary contact. Transcriptome-wide gene expression (44,102 genes) was highly parallel across replicates, involved biological processes characteristic of ecotype morphology and physiology, and revealed parallelism at the level of regulatory networks. This expression divergence was not only plastic but in part genetically controlled by parallel cis-eQTL. Lastly, we found that the magnitude of phenotypic divergence was largely correlated with the genetic differentiation and gene expression divergence. In contrast, the direction of phenotypic change was mostly determined by the interplay of adaptive genetic variation, gene expression, and ecosystem size. Ecosystem size further explained variation in putatively adaptive, ecotype-associated genomic patterns within and across lineages, highlighting the role of environmental variation and stochasticity in parallel evolution. Together, our findings demonstrate the parallel evolution of eco-morphology and gene expression within and across evolutionary lineages, which is controlled by the interplay of environmental stochasticity and evolutionary contingencies, largely overcoming variable evolutionary histories and genomic backgrounds.
Document Type: article
File Description: electronic resource
Language: English
ISSN: 1553-7390
1553-7404
Relation: https://doaj.org/toc/1553-7390; https://doaj.org/toc/1553-7404
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1008658
Access URL: https://doaj.org/article/ae0b4ffe74ef48b69daa125dff9f897e
Accession Number: edsdoj.0b4ffe74ef48b69daa125dff9f897e
Database: Directory of Open Access Journals
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More Details
ISSN:15537390
15537404
DOI:10.1371/journal.pgen.1008658
Published in:PLoS Genetics
Language:English