Evolution Letters最新文献

{"title":"Correction to: Gestation length both shapes and is shaped by other life history traits in terrestrial eutherian mammals.","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qrag007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qrag007","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1093/evlett/qraf028.].</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":"10 2","pages":"238"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13043902/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147624450","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Tempo and drivers of 3D eye size evolution in temperate butterflies.","authors":"Sridhar Halali, Stephen A Hall, Lars B Pettersson, Romain Carrié, Paul Caplat, Emily Baird, Niklas Wahlberg","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qrag001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qrag001","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Sensory traits shape animal lifestyles due to the central role they play in retrieving and processing environmental information. However, being some of the most energetically expensive tissues to build and maintain, ecological demands often modulate investment in these organs. Evidence that ecology shapes the evolution of sensory traits is plenty, but is heavily biased towards vertebrates and has only recently begun to emerge in invertebrates. Here, we elucidate the macroevolution of a key sensory organ-eye size-using temperate butterflies as models. Using micro-CT X-ray imaging of pinned museum specimens, we quantified the eye size of 443 individuals comprising 59 species. Further, using 12 years of long-term monitoring data to quantify species habitat, we tested the hypothesis that forest-associated species, likely experiencing dimmer light conditions, should have larger eyes than those from open habitats. Our comparative analyses revealed tight allometric scaling between eye and wing size, and phylogeny alone explained 74% of eye size variation, with low heterogeneity in the evolutionary rates. Further, we found that habitat structure had no association with eye size. Overall, our findings indicate that allometry and shared ancestry, not ecology, shape the macroevolution of 3D eye size in temperate butterflies. We also demonstrate how non-invasive microCT imaging can be used on pinned museum specimens for studying phenotypic evolution on a macroevolutionary scale.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":"10 2","pages":"195-206"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13043916/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147624363","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Origins of violence: evolutionary decoupling between mild and lethal conspecific aggression in primates.","authors":"Bonaventura Majolo, Samantha J Wakes, Marcello Ruta","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qrag002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qrag002","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Theories on the evolutionary origins of human aggression have often implicitly assumed that conspecific aggression is a single behavioral trait. However, different types of aggression can be described, based upon their intensity, frequency, as well as the age and sex of the opponents. The phylogenetic relationships between different types of aggression remain poorly understood. We tested the strength of correlated evolution between five distinct types of aggression in primates, namely, between- and within-group mild (i.e., not life-threatening) aggression, between- and within-group adulticide, and infanticide. We collected data on 100 free-ranging, non-provisioned and group-living species, including humans. Phylogeny had a weaker effect on mild than on lethal aggression; the effect of phylogeny was greater for adulticide, especially when we partitioned our analyses by the sex of the attacker. Furthermore, we found a positive correlation between within- and between-group adulticide, and with infanticide; these results were mostly confirmed when we considered the sex of the attacker. Conversely, the two types of mild aggression were weakly related with lethal aggression. Our study highlights the importance of treating aggression as a complex set of interrelated traits in comparative analyses. Our findings indicate that mild aggression is not closely linked to killing; thus, the escalation of aggression may follow more complex patterns that what predicted by current socio-ecological models.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":"10 2","pages":"207-216"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13043903/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147624438","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"AI solutions for evolutionary genomics of nonmodel species.","authors":"Michael DeGiorgio, Sandipan Paul Arnab, Matteo Fumagalli","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qrag004","DOIUrl":"10.1093/evlett/qrag004","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>As large-scale genomic datasets are becoming abundant, new questions can now be posed in evolutionary biology. Although innovative methodological approaches are constantly developed to test these new hypotheses, their application to the study of nonmodel species is hampered by technical challenges associated with such systems. In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, mostly in the form of deep neural networks, have been successfully introduced to analyse genomic data from nonmodel species. Here, we highlight the latest trends in deep learning to infer demographic history and signals of natural selection, and offer novel research directions to develop AI algorithms for the study of nonmodel organisms. Specifically, we identify strategies to process data missingness and uncertainty, to infer selective events in the face of unknown genomic and demographic parameters, and to generate interpretable and explainable predictions. We demonstrate our arguments by showcasing an original implementation to detect selective sweeps from an experimental setting with low sample size, uncertain sequencing data, and unknown demographic model, as typical in studies of nonmodel species. We argue that the study of nonmodel organisms is an opportunity to develop general-purpose data-driven methodologies for evolutionary inferences. Fair sharing of resources and inclusive frameworks are key to enabling researchers to benefit the most from this new wave of technologies.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":"10 2","pages":"135-146"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13043892/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147624407","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The nature and prevalence of diversification rate shifts across the Tree of Life.","authors":"Bjørn T Kopperud, Alessio Capobianco, John T Clarke, Luis Palazzesi, Sebastian Höhna","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qrag005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qrag005","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Strong disparity in species richness among organisms is well documented, but heterogeneity in the underlying diversification process is less understood. Using novel probabilistic methods, we investigate clade-specific diversification rate shifts in several species-rich phylogenies, together representing over 300,000 species across the Tree of Life. We find that diversification rate shifts are extremely prevalent across all clades, with more frequent changes in younger clades and an overall excess of upshifts, resulting in an apparent acceleration of net diversification rates. We also reveal that heterogeneity in diversification rates is related to the tempo of diversification itself. While we find support for more prevalent shifts in speciation rates than extinction rates and more upshifts than downshifts, this is partially due to data insufficiency and inference challenges. Our insights are fundamentally enabled by studying numerous large phylogenies with rigorous statistical methods, showing widespread prevalence of diversification rate shifts across the Tree of Life.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":"10 2","pages":"217-227"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13043920/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147624433","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Visual pigments of basal lineages of bony fishes support independent ecological shifts from a shallow marine to a freshwater niche.","authors":"Yimeng Cui, Na Li, Heye Chen, Lingying Xing, Yaoqi Xie, Yanfang Xie, Mengyuan Ma, Jiayi Zhao, Wenna Nan, Lei Lei, Kun Wang, Stephen J Rossiter, Yang Liu","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qrag006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qrag006","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Bony fishes (Osteichthyes) occupy a diverse range of aquatic habitats, yet the ecological transitions underlying their early evolution remain debated. Extant \"living fossil\" lineages-such as lungfishes and basal ray-finned fishes-are primarily restricted to benthic freshwater habitats, raising questions about the ancestral ecology of bony fishes. To investigate this, we reconstructed and expressed visual pigments from both extant and inferred ancestral taxa in vitro, enabling characterization of their spectral sensitivities. The results reveal that the ancestral visual phenotype is most consistent with adaptation to shallow-water light conditions. Furthermore, parallel shifts in the spectral tuning of visual pigments across both lobe-finned and ray-finned fish lineages were observed, with consistent patterns of shorter wavelength tuning in middle/long-wavelength-sensitive pigments, paired with longer wavelength shifts in others. The shifts of spectral tuning support an ecological transition from marine to freshwater habitats. Additionally, changes in rhodopsin retinal release rates and signatures of positive selection on opsin genes further point to independent visual adaptations to freshwater environments in both lineages. These findings suggest that early bony fish evolution involved ecological expansion from shallow marine habitats into deeper or more turbid freshwater environments, as reflected in parallel adaptations of visual systems to benthic photic conditions.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":"10 2","pages":"228-237"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13043905/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147624420","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Genomic analyses in <i>Drosophila</i> do not support the classic allopatric model of speciation.","authors":"Leeban H Yusuf, Dominik R Laetsch, Konrad Lohse, Michael G Ritchie","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qraf053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qraf053","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The allopatric model of speciation has dominated our understanding of speciation biology and biogeography since the Modern Synthesis. It is uncontroversial because reproductive isolation may readily emerge as a by-product of evolutionary divergence during allopatry unopposed by gene flow. Recent genomic studies have found that gene flow between species is common, but whether allopatric speciation is common has rarely been systematically tested across a continuum of closely related species. Here, we fit a range of demographic models of evolutionary divergence to whole-genome sequence data from 93 pairs of <i>Drosophila</i> species to infer speciation histories and levels of post-divergence gene flow. We find that speciation with gene flow is common, even between currently allopatric pairs of species. Estimates of historical gene flow are not predicted by current range overlap. Whilst evidence for secondary contact is generally limited, a few sympatric pairs showed strong support for a secondary contact model. Our analyses suggest that most speciation processes involve some long-term gene flow, perhaps due to repeated cycles of allopatry and contact, without requiring an extensive allopatric phase.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":"10 2","pages":"186-194"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-01-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13043940/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147624435","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Longevity is heritable and negatively genetically correlated between the sexes in yellow-bellied marmots.","authors":"Michela N Dumas, Bennett Krasnay, Carol-Ann Chabot, Maxime Fraser Franco, Émilie Gagnon, Emil Isaksson, Lytana Lécuyer, Giulia Masoero, Paula Molina, Pierre-Olivier Montiglio, Sarah Saneeibajgiran, Sophia St Lawrence, Daniel T Blumstein, Julien G A Martin","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qraf051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qraf051","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Longevity, a major fitness component, is heritable in multiple species, including both captive and wild populations, and often varies widely between the sexes. The sex-specific genetic architecture of longevity, however, has rarely been estimated in wild populations, despite its potentially large implication for the evolutionary dynamic of a species. Using a long-term study of wild yellow-bellied marmots, a hibernating rodent, we estimated sex-specific additive genetic variance <i>V_A</i> and the cross-sex genetic correlation <i>r_fm</i> of longevity. Given the challenges associated with accurately measuring longevity in the wild, we used a new analytical approach based on a Censored Poisson distribution allowing us to integrate measurement errors on longevity in the model. Our approach revealed moderate and comparable <i>V_A</i> in both sexes and a strongly negative <i>r_fm</i> , albeit with large credible intervals. This contrasts with the results from a classic model with a restricted dataset for which <i>V_A</i> in males was estimated as zero, rendering the <i>r_fm</i> inestimable and uninterpretable. Our results suggest that studying selection and evolution while focusing on only one sex can lead to erroneous predictions given that, in marmots, selection pressures increasing longevity in one sex would inherently select for the reverse effect in the other sex. Taken together, this suggests the possible presence of a self-reinforcing feedback loop for the development of different life-history strategies among sexes in marmots, with long-lived females producing short-lived males who must maximize early life reproductive success (\"live-fast die-young\" strategy) and vice versa. Our study provides rare evidence of heritable longevity in a wild population and highlights how genetic conflicts between the sexes may constrain evolution and help maintain sex-specific genetic variance in fitness.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":"10 2","pages":"165-172"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13043904/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147624453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Environmental predictability drives different routes to adaptation.","authors":"Anna C Vinton, Ben Ibbott, Jinlin Chen, Samuel J L Gascoigne, Dominique Baptiste, Tim Coulson","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qraf052","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qraf052","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Climate change is altering thermal environments, yet we know little about how environmental predictability shapes species' adaptive responses. Different species may rely on plasticity or evolution to survive environmental change, but how these strategies depend on environmental predictability remains unclear. Experimental evidence that distinguishes between plastic and evolutionary responses to different patterns of environmental variability has been lacking. Here, we present the first experimental demonstration that compares adaptive responses to predictable versus unpredictable thermal variation, disentangling plastic from evolutionary changes. Using <i>Drosophila melanogaster</i> populations evolved for 11 generations under constant, predictably fluctuating, and randomly fluctuating thermal regimes, we assessed survival and fecundity: a plasticity assay testing flies directly from their evolutionary environments to capture total phenotypic responses, and a common garden assay after two generations of standardized rearing to isolate genetic changes. Strikingly, environmental predictability shaped divergent life-history strategies that were only revealed by comparing our two assays. Populations from predictably fluctuating environments evolved enhanced survival, but this benefit was only visible in the common garden assay, not when tested directly from their evolutionary environment. Conversely, populations from randomly fluctuating environments showed reduced survival in the plasticity assay and consistently lower fecundity in the common garden assay, though this reproductive cost was completely masked in the plasticity assay. These contrasting responses demonstrate that environmental predictability fundamentally determines life-history evolution: predictable variation favors investment in stress-resistant longevity, while unpredictable variation imposes both immediate survival costs and constitutive reproductive constraints. Our findings challenge the traditional view that environmental variation uniformly selects for increased plasticity, instead revealing that the predictability of environmental change determines both the target and mechanism of adaptation. As climate change increases environmental variability and reduces environmental predictability, these insights provide crucial guidance for predicting species persistence and developing effective conservation strategies.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":"10 2","pages":"173-185"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13043901/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147624457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Do alternative reproductive tactics facilitate evolutionary rescue? A comment on Knell & Parrett 2024.","authors":"Jana M Riederer, Franz J Weissing","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qraf049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qraf049","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This contribution is a comment on a simulation study of Robert J. Knell and Jonathan M. Parrett (Evo. Lett. 8, 539-349, 2024). There is growing evidence that in ecological adaptation, sexual selection is a \"double-edged sword\"-it can fuel adaptation and population persistence, or hinder adaptation and lead to population extinction. Knell and Parrett explore this topic, using an individual-based model to investigate how alternative reproductive tactics (ARTs) affect adaptation to changing environments. They find that in the presence of ARTs, extinction can be averted, as fixed ARTs facilitate evolutionary rescue. While we appreciate their research question and approach, we question the generality of this result. First, some of their conclusions hinge on the parameter values chosen. In their model, individuals express one of two reproductive tactics (fighting or sneaking) depending on whether their condition exceeds a given threshold. We demonstrate that their conclusions rely strongly on this threshold value. For high values (i.e., when most individuals sneak), they observe evolutionary rescue-however, for values lower than those explored in K&P, fixed ARTs do not impact extinction. When we allow the threshold to evolve, it evolves to take low values, indicating that when fixed ARTs are adaptive, they do not promote evolutionary rescue. Second, K&P assume that the sneaking strategy results in considerably lower mating success than the fighting strategy. We show that, if the average mating success of the sneaking strategy is increased, fixed ARTs again do not cause evolutionary rescue. Finally, we show that varying the degree of influx of variation or the inheritance process similarly breaks the association between fixed ARTs and evolutionary rescue. Overall, we agree with K&P that ARTs may influence evolutionary rescue, but possibly in different contexts than those considered in their manuscript. Thus, whether and how ARTs shape extinction risk remains an open question.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":"10 2","pages":"147-151"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13043900/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147624384","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}