Evolutionary adaptation is generally thought to occur through incremental mutational steps, but large mutational leaps can occur during its early stages. These are challenging to study in nature due to the difficulty of observing new genetic variants as they arise and spread, but characterizing their genomic dynamics is important for understanding factors favoring rapid adaptation. Here, we report genomic consequences of recent, adaptive song loss in a Hawaiian population of field crickets (Teleogryllus oceanicus).A discrete genetic variant, flatwing, appeared and spread approximately 15 years ago. Flatwing erases sound-producing veins on male wings. These silent flatwing males are protected from a lethal, eavesdropping parasitoid fly. We sequenced, assembled and annotated the cricket genome, produced a linkage map, and identified a flatwing quantitative trait locus covering a large region of the X chromosome. Gene expression profiling showed that flatwing is associated with extensive genome-wide effects on embryonic gene expression. We found that flatwing male crickets express feminized chemical pheromones. This male feminizing effect, on a different sexual signaling modality, is genetically associated with the flatwing genotype. Our findings suggest that the early stages of evolutionary adaptation to extreme pressures can be accompanied by greater genomic and phenotypic disruption than previously appreciated, and highlight how abrupt adaptation might involve suites of traits that arise through pleiotropy or genomic hitchhiking.
Diatoms, a key group of polar marine microbes, support highly productive ocean ecosystems. Like all life on earth, diatoms do not live in isolation, and they are therefore under constant biotic and abiotic pressures which directly influence their evolution through natural selection. Despite their importance in polar ecosystems, polar diatoms are understudied compared to temperate species. The observed rapid change in the polar climate, especially warming, has created increased research interest to discover the underlying causes and potential consequences on single species to entire ecosystems. Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies have greatly expanded our knowledge by revealing the molecular underpinnings of physiological adaptations to polar environmental conditions. Their genomes, transcriptomes, and proteomes together with the first eukaryotic meta-omics data of surface ocean polar microbiomes reflect the environmental pressures through adaptive responses such as the expansion of protein families over time as a consequence of selection. Polar regions and their microbiomes are inherently connected to climate cycles and their feedback loops. An integrated understanding built on “omics” resources centered around diatoms as key primary producers will enable us to reveal unifying concepts of microbial co-evolution and adaptation in polar oceans. This knowledge, which aims to relate past environmental changes to specific adaptations, will be required to improve climate prediction models for polar ecosystems because it provides a unifying framework of how interacting and co-evolving biological communities might respond to future environmental change.
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