scholarly journals Frequent Non-random Shifts in the Temporal Sequence of Developmental Landmark Events during Teleost Evolutionary Diversification

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fumihiro Ito ◽  
Tomotaka Matsumoto ◽  
Tatsumi Hirata

AbstractMorphological transformations can be generated by evolutionary changes in the sequence of developmental events. In this study, we examined the evolutionary dynamics of the developmental sequence on a macroevolutionary scale using the teleost. Using the information from previous reports describing the development of 31 species, we extracted the developmental sequences of 19 landmark events involving the formation of phylogenetically conserved body parts; we then inferred ancestral developmental sequences by two different parsimony-based methods—event-pairing (Jeffery, Bininda-Emonds, Coates & Richardson, 2002a) and continuous analysis (Germain & Laurin, 2009). The phylogenetic comparisons of these sequences revealed event-dependent heterogeneity in the frequency of sequence changes. Most of the sequence changes occurred as exchanges of temporally neighboring events. The phylogenetic analyses suggested that the ancestral species had experienced frequent changes in developmental sequences. Although the analyses showed that these heterochronic changes accumulated along phylogenic time, the precise distribution of the changes over the teleost phylogeny remains unclear due to technical limitations. Finally, this first comprehensive analysis of teleost developmental sequences will provide solid ground on which to elucidate the significance of developmental timing in animal morphological diversification.

2009 ◽  
Vol 90 (12) ◽  
pp. 2877-2883 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanna Carpi ◽  
Luigi Bertolotti ◽  
Sergio Rosati ◽  
Annapaola Rizzoli

Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) is a severe disease that has been endemic in north-east Italy since 1992. Over the past two decades, there has been an increase in the number of human cases reported in many European countries, including Italy. To assess the current TBE infection risk, questing ticks were collected from known TBE foci, as well as from a site in northern Italy where no human infections have been reported previously. A total of 1739 Ixodes ricinus (1485 nymphs and 254 adults) was collected and analysed for TBEV prevalence by a real-time RT-PCR targeting the 3′ untranslated region. Phylogenetic analyses of the partial envelope gene were conducted on two newly sequenced TBE virus (TBEV) strains and 28 previously published sequences to investigate the genealogical relationships of the circulating TBEV strains. These phylogenetic analyses confirmed a previous report that the European TBEV subtype is the only subtype circulating within the TBE foci in north-east Italy. Interestingly, nucleotide sequence analysis revealed a high degree of divergence (mean 2.54 %) between the TBEV strains recovered in the Italian province of Trento, despite the circulation of a single TBEV subtype. This elevated genetic variability within a single TBE focus may reflect local differences in the long-standing evolutionary dynamics of TBEV at this site relative to previously characterized sites, or more recent and continuous reintroduction of various TBEV strains.


2009 ◽  
Vol 364 (1523) ◽  
pp. 1483-1489 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Pelletier ◽  
D. Garant ◽  
A.P. Hendry

Evolutionary ecologists and population biologists have recently considered that ecological and evolutionary changes are intimately linked and can occur on the same time-scale. Recent theoretical developments have shown how the feedback between ecological and evolutionary dynamics can be linked, and there are now empirical demonstrations showing that ecological change can lead to rapid evolutionary change. We also have evidence that microevolutionary change can leave an ecological signature. We are at a stage where the integration of ecology and evolution is a necessary step towards major advances in our understanding of the processes that shape and maintain biodiversity. This special feature about ‘eco-evolutionary dynamics’ brings together biologists from empirical and theoretical backgrounds to bridge the gap between ecology and evolution and provide a series of contributions aimed at quantifying the interactions between these fundamental processes.


eLife ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Stundl ◽  
Anna Pospisilova ◽  
David Jandzik ◽  
Peter Fabian ◽  
Barbora Dobiasova ◽  
...  

In most vertebrates, pharyngeal arches form in a stereotypic anterior-to-posterior progression. To gain insight into the mechanisms underlying evolutionary changes in pharyngeal arch development, here we investigate embryos and larvae of bichirs. Bichirs represent the earliest diverged living group of ray-finned fishes, and possess intriguing traits otherwise typical for lobe-finned fishes such as ventral paired lungs and larval external gills. In bichir embryos, we find that the anteroposterior way of formation of cranial segments is modified by the unique acceleration of the entire hyoid arch segment, with earlier and orchestrated development of the endodermal, mesodermal, and neural crest tissues. This major heterochronic shift in the anteroposterior developmental sequence enables early appearance of the external gills that represent key breathing organs of bichir free-living embryos and early larvae. Bichirs thus stay as unique models for understanding developmental mechanisms facilitating increased breathing capacity.


2018 ◽  
pp. 403-424
Author(s):  
Matthew R. Walsh ◽  
Michelle Packer ◽  
Shannon Beston ◽  
Collin Funkhouser ◽  
Michael Gillis ◽  
...  

Much research has shown that variation in ecological processes can drive rapid evolutionary changes over periods of years to decades. Such contemporary adaptation sets the stage for evolution to have reciprocal impacts on the properties of populations, communities, and ecosystems, with ongoing interactions between ecological and evolutionary forces. The importance and generality of these eco-evolutionary dynamics are largely unknown. In this chapter, we promote the use of water fleas (Daphnia sp.) as a model organism in the exploration of eco-evolutionary interactions in nature. The many characteristics of Daphnia that make them suitable for laboratory study in conjunction with their well-known ecological importance in lakes, position Daphnia to contribute new and important insights into eco-evolutionary dynamics. We first review the influence of key environmental stressors in Daphnia evolution. We then highlight recent work documenting the pathway from life history evolution to ecology using Daphnia as a model. This review demonstrates that much is known about the influence of ecology on Daphnia life history evolution, while research exploring the genomic basis of adaptation as well as the influence of Daphnia life history traits on ecological processes is beginning to accumulate.


2021 ◽  
pp. 329-340
Author(s):  
Anna Kuparinen

Contemporary evolution that occurs across ecologically relevant time scales, such as a few generations or decades, can not only change phenotypes but also feed back to demographic parameters and the dynamics of populations. This chapter presents a method to make phenotypic traits evolve in mechanistic individual-based simulations. The method is broadly applicable, as demonstrated through its applications to boreal forest adaptation to global warming, eco-evolutionary dynamics driven by fishing-induced selection in Atlantic cod, and the evolution of age at maturity in Atlantic salmon. The main message of this chapter is that there may be little reason to exclude phenotypic evolution in analyses of population dynamics, as these can be modified by evolutionary changes in life histories. Future challenges will be to integrate rapidly accumulating genomic knowledge and an ecosystem perspective to improve population projections and to better understand the drivers of population dynamics.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 811-826 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Erives ◽  
Bernd Fritzsch

The evolutionary diversification of animals is one of Earth’s greatest marvels, yet its earliest steps are shrouded in mystery. Animals, the monophyletic clade known as Metazoa, evolved wildly divergent multicellular life strategies featuring ciliated sensory epithelia. In many lineages epithelial sensoria became coupled to increasingly complex nervous systems. Currently, different phylogenetic analyses of single-copy genes support mutually-exclusive possibilities that either Porifera or Ctenophora is sister to all other animals. Resolving this dilemma would advance the ecological and evolutionary understanding of the first animals and the evolution of nervous systems. Here we describe a comparative phylogenetic approach based on gene duplications. We computationally identify and analyze gene families with early metazoan duplications using an approach that mitigates apparent gene loss resulting from the miscalling of paralogs. In the transmembrane channel-like (TMC) family of mechano-transducing channels, we find ancient duplications that define separate clades for Eumetazoa (Placozoa + Cnidaria + Bilateria) vs. Ctenophora, and one duplication that is shared only by Eumetazoa and Porifera. In the Max-like protein X (MLX and MLXIP) family of bHLH-ZIP regulators of metabolism, we find that all major lineages from Eumetazoa and Porifera (sponges) share a duplicated gene pair that is sister to the single-copy gene maintained in Ctenophora. These results suggest a new avenue for deducing deep phylogeny by choosing rather than avoiding ancient gene paralogies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhibo Wang ◽  
Xiaofei Yang ◽  
Zhenguo Zhang ◽  
Fuchen Shi ◽  
Houhun Li

Abstract Glochidion plants and Epicephala moths played different roles and kept the balance in the mutualism. We studied the four coexisting Epicephala species on Glochidion sphaerogynum in detail and reconstructed the phylogenic tree of 40 Gracillariidae species. The results showed that one of them (Epicephala impolliniferens) did not pollinate G. sphaerogynum, because of lacking the specialized structure of carrying pollen. These results suggested that E. impolliniferens acted as a ‘cheater’ in the system. The phylogenetic analyses suggested that E. impolliniferens derived from a pollinating species, and had secondarily gave up the ability to pollinate. This is a typical phenomenon of mutualism reversal. The phenomenon exhibits the co-evolutionary diversification under selection pressures.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. eaav3875 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Luque ◽  
R. M. Feldmann ◽  
O. Vernygora ◽  
C. E. Schweitzer ◽  
C. B. Cameron ◽  
...  

Evolutionary origins of novel forms are often obscure because early and transitional fossils tend to be rare, poorly preserved, or lack proper phylogenetic contexts. We describe a new, exceptionally preserved enigmatic crab from the mid-Cretaceous of Colombia and the United States, whose completeness illuminates the early disparity of the group and the origins of novel forms. Its large and unprotected compound eyes, small fusiform body, and leg-like mouthparts suggest larval trait retention into adulthood via heterochronic development (pedomorphosis), while its large oar-like legs represent the earliest known adaptations in crabs for active swimming. Our phylogenetic analyses, including representatives of all major lineages of fossil and extant crabs, challenge conventional views of their evolution by revealing multiple convergent losses of a typical “crab-like” body plan since the Early Cretaceous. These parallel morphological transformations may be associated with repeated invasions of novel environments, including the pelagic/necto-benthic zone in this pedomorphic chimera crab.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (6) ◽  
pp. e1600124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandre Jousset ◽  
Nico Eisenhauer ◽  
Monika Merker ◽  
Nicolas Mouquet ◽  
Stefan Scheu

There is a growing awareness that biodiversity not only drives ecosystem services but also affects evolutionary dynamics. However, different theories predict contrasting outcomes on when do evolutionary processes occur within a context of competition. We tested whether functional diversity can explain diversification patterns. We tracked the survival and diversification of a focal bacterial species (Pseudomonas fluorescens) growing in bacterial communities of variable diversity and composition. We found that high functional diversity reduced the fitness of the focal species and, at the same time, fostered its diversification. This pattern was linked to resource competition: High diversity increased competition on a portion of the resources while leaving most underexploited. The evolved phenotypes of the focal species showed a better use of underexploited resources, albeit at a cost of lower overall growth rates. As a result, diversification alleviated the impact of competition on the fitness of the focal species. We conclude that biodiversity can stimulate evolutionary diversification, provided that sufficient alternative niches are available.


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