Evolution Letters最新文献

{"title":"The evolutionary demise of a social interaction: experimentally induced loss of traits involved in the supply and demand of care.","authors":"Eleanor K Bladon,&nbsp;Sonia Pascoal,&nbsp;Nancy Bird,&nbsp;Rahia Mashoodh,&nbsp;Rebecca M Kilner","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qrad016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qrad016","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Phenotypic plasticity enables animals to adjust their behavior flexibly to their social environment-sometimes through the expression of adaptive traits that have not been exhibited for several generations. We investigated how long social adaptations can usefully persist when they are not routinely expressed, by using experimental evolution to document the loss of social traits associated with the supply and demand of parental care. We allowed populations of burying beetles <i>Nicrophorus vespilloides</i> to evolve in two different social environments for 48 generations in the lab. In \"Full Care\" populations, traits associated with the supply and demand of parental care were expressed at every generation, whereas in \"No Care\" populations we prevented expression of these traits experimentally. We then revived trait expression in the No Care populations at generations 24, 43, and 48 by allowing parents to supply post-hatching care and compared these social traits with those expressed by the Full Care populations. We found that offspring demands for care and male provision of care in the No Care populations were lost sooner than female provision of care. We suggest that this reflects differences in the strength of selection for the expression of alternative traits in offspring, males and females, which can enhance fitness when post-hatching care is disrupted.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10210443/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9547513","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 role of recognition error in the stability of green-beard genes.","authors":"Jibeom Choi,&nbsp;Seoeun Lee,&nbsp;Hyun Kim,&nbsp;Junpyo Park","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qrad012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qrad012","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The empirical examples of the green-beard genes, once a conundrum of evolutionary biology, are accumulating, while theoretical analyses of this topic are occasional compared to those concerning (narrow-sense) kin selection. In particular, the recognition error of the green-beard effect that the cooperator fails to accurately recognize the other cooperators or defectors is readily found in numerous green-beard genes. To our knowledge, however, no model up to date has taken that effect into account. In this article, we investigated the effect of recognition error on the fitness of the green-beard gene. By employing theories of evolutionary games, our mathematical model predicts that the fitness of the green-beard gene is frequency dependent (frequency of the green-beard gene), which was corroborated by experiments performed with yeast <i>FLO1</i>. The experiment also shows that the cells with the green-beard gene (<i>FLO1</i>) are sturdier under severe stress. We conclude that the low recognition error among the cooperators, the higher reward of cooperation, and the higher cost of defection confer an advantage to the green-beard gene under certain conditions, confirmed by numerical simulation as well. Interestingly, we expect that the recognition error to the defectors may promote the cooperator fitness if the cooperator frequency is low and mutual defection is detrimental. Our ternary approach of mathematical analysis, experiments, and simulation lays the groundwork of the standard model for the green-beard gene that can be generalized to other species.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/b6/6a/qrad012.PMC10210436.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9547512","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":"Predicting evolution in experimental range expansions of an aquatic model system.","authors":"Giacomo Zilio,&nbsp;Sascha Krenek,&nbsp;Claire Gougat-Barbera,&nbsp;Emanuel A Fronhofer,&nbsp;Oliver Kaltz","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qrad010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qrad010","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Predicting range expansion dynamics is an important goal of both fundamental and applied research in conservation and global change biology. However, this is challenging if ecological and evolutionary processes occur on the same time scale. Using the freshwater ciliate <i>Paramecium caudatum</i>, we combined experimental evolution and mathematical modeling to assess the predictability of evolutionary change during range expansions. In the experiment, we followed ecological dynamics and trait evolution in independently replicated microcosm populations in range core and front treatments, where episodes of natural dispersal alternated with periods of population growth. These eco-evolutionary conditions were recreated in a predictive mathematical model, parametrized with dispersal and growth data of the 20 founder strains in the experiment. We found that short-term evolution was driven by selection for increased dispersal in the front treatment and general selection for higher growth rates in all treatments. There was a good quantitative match between predicted and observed trait changes. Phenotypic divergence was further mirrored by genetic divergence between range core and front treatments. In each treatment, we found the repeated fixation of the same cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) marker genotype, carried by strains that also were the most likely winners in our model. Long-term evolution in the experimental range front lines resulted in the emergence of a dispersal syndrome, namely a competition-colonization trade-off. Altogether, both model and experiment highlight the potential importance of dispersal evolution as a driver of range expansions. Thus, evolution at range fronts may follow predictable trajectories, at least for simple scenarios, and predicting these dynamics may be possible from knowledge of few key parameters.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/c9/86/qrad010.PMC10210439.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9547517","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":"Divergent evolution of genetic sex determination mechanisms along environmental gradients.","authors":"Martijn A Schenkel,&nbsp;Jean-Christophe Billeter,&nbsp;Leo W Beukeboom,&nbsp;Ido Pen","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qrad011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qrad011","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Sex determination (SD) is a crucial developmental process, but its molecular underpinnings are very diverse, both between and within species. SD mechanisms have traditionally been categorized as either genetic (GSD) or environmental (ESD), depending on the type of cue that triggers sexual differentiation. However, mixed systems, with both genetic and environmental components, are more prevalent than previously thought. Here, we show theoretically that environmental effects on expression levels of genes within SD regulatory mechanisms can easily trigger within-species evolutionary divergence of SD mechanisms. This may lead to the stable coexistence of multiple SD mechanisms and to spatial variation in the occurrence of different SD mechanisms along environmental gradients. We applied the model to the SD system of the housefly, a global species with world-wide latitudinal clines in the frequencies of different SD systems, and found that it correctly predicted these clines if specific genes in the housefly SD system were assumed to have temperature-dependent expression levels. We conclude that environmental sensitivity of gene regulatory networks may play an important role in diversification of SD mechanisms.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10210438/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9599580","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":"Ornaments indicate parasite load only if they are dynamic or parasites are contagious.","authors":"Liam R Dougherty,&nbsp;Faith Rovenolt,&nbsp;Alexia Luyet,&nbsp;Jukka Jokela,&nbsp;Jessica F Stephenson","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qrad017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qrad017","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Choosing to mate with an infected partner has several potential fitness costs, including disease transmission and infection-induced reductions in fecundity and parental care. By instead choosing a mate with no, or few, parasites, animals avoid these costs and may also obtain resistance genes for offspring. Within a population, then, the quality of sexually selected ornaments on which mate choice is based should correlate negatively with the number of parasites with which a host is infected (\"parasite load\"). However, the hundreds of tests of this prediction yield positive, negative, or no correlation between parasite load and ornament quality. Here, we use phylogenetically controlled meta-analysis of 424 correlations from 142 studies on a wide range of host and parasite taxa to evaluate explanations for this ambiguity. We found that ornament quality is weakly negatively correlated with parasite load overall, but the relationship is more strongly negative among ornaments that can dynamically change in quality, such as behavioral displays and skin pigmentation, and thus can accurately reflect current parasite load. The relationship was also more strongly negative among parasites that can transmit during sex. Thus, the direct benefit of avoiding parasite transmission may be a key driver of parasite-mediated sexual selection. No other moderators, including methodological details and whether males exhibit parental care, explained the substantial heterogeneity in our data set. We hope to stimulate research that more inclusively considers the many and varied ways in which parasites, sexual selection, and epidemiology intersect.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10210455/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9550516","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":"Damaraland mole-rats do not rely on helpers for reproduction or survival.","authors":"Jack Thorley, Hanna M Bensch, Kyle Finn, Tim Clutton-Brock, Markus Zöttl","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qrad023","DOIUrl":"10.1093/evlett/qrad023","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In eusocial invertebrates and obligate cooperative breeders, successful reproduction is dependent on assistance from non-breeding group members. Although naked (<i>Heterocephalus glaber</i>) and Damaraland mole-rats (<i>Fukomys damarensis</i>) are often described as eusocial and their groups are suggested to resemble those of eusocial insects more closely than groups of any other vertebrate, the extent to which breeding individuals benefit from the assistance of non-breeding group members is unclear. Here we show that, in wild Damaraland mole-rats, prospective female breeders usually disperse and settle alone in new burrow systems where they show high survival rates and remain in good body condition-often for several years-before being joined by males. In contrast to many obligate cooperative vertebrates, pairs reproduced successfully without non-breeding helpers, and the breeding success of experimentally formed pairs was similar to that of larger, established groups. Though larger breeding groups recruited slightly more pups than smaller groups, adult survival was independent of group size and group size had mixed effects on the growth of non-breeders. Our results suggest that Damaraland mole-rats do not need groups to survive and that cooperative breeding in the species is not obligate as pairs can-and frequently do-reproduce without the assistance of helpers. While re-emphasizing the importance of ecological constraints on dispersal in social mole-rats, the mixed effects of group size in our study suggest that indirect benefits accrued through cooperative behavior may have played a less prominent role in the evolution of mole-rat group-living than previously thought.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2023-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10355180/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10207788","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":"Experimental evolution of metabolism under nutrient restriction: enhanced amino acid catabolism and a key role of branched-chain amino acids.","authors":"Fanny Cavigliasso,&nbsp;Loriane Savary,&nbsp;Jorge E Spangenberg,&nbsp;Hector Gallart-Ayala,&nbsp;Julijana Ivanisevic,&nbsp;Tadeusz J Kawecki","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qrad018","DOIUrl":"10.1093/evlett/qrad018","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Periodic food shortage is a common ecological stressor for animals, likely to drive physiological and metabolic adaptations to alleviate its consequences, particularly for juveniles that have no option but to continue to grow and develop despite undernutrition. Here we study changes in metabolism associated with adaptation to nutrient shortage, evolved by replicate <i>Drosophila melanogaster</i> populations maintained on a nutrient-poor larval diet for over 240 generations. In a factorial metabolomics experiment we showed that both phenotypic plasticity and genetically-based adaptation to the poor diet involved wide-ranging changes in metabolite abundance; however, the plastic response did not predict the evolutionary change. Compared to nonadapted larvae exposed to the poor diet for the first time, the adapted larvae showed lower levels of multiple free amino acids in their tissues-and yet they grew faster. By quantifying accumulation of the nitrogen stable isotope ¹⁵N we show that adaptation to the poor diet led to an increased use of amino acids for energy generation. This apparent \"waste\" of scarce amino acids likely results from the trade-off between acquisition of dietary amino acids and carbohydrates observed in these populations. The three branched-chain amino acids (leucine, isoleucine, and valine) showed a unique pattern of depletion in adapted larvae raised on the poor diet. A diet supplementation experiment demonstrated that these amino acids are limiting for growth on the poor diet, suggesting that their low levels resulted from their expeditious use for protein synthesis. These results demonstrate that selection driven by nutrient shortage not only promotes improved acquisition of limiting nutrients, but also has wide-ranging effects on how the nutrients are used. They also show that the abundance of free amino acids in the tissues does not, in general, reflect the nutritional condition and growth potential of an animal.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10355184/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10226511","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":"Tolerance-conferring defensive symbionts and the evolution of parasite virulence.","authors":"Cameron A Smith, Ben Ashby","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qrad015","DOIUrl":"10.1093/evlett/qrad015","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Defensive symbionts in the host microbiome can confer protection from infection or reduce the harms of being infected by a parasite. Defensive symbionts are therefore promising agents of biocontrol that could be used to control or ameliorate the impact of infectious diseases. Previous theory has shown how symbionts can evolve along the parasitism-mutualism continuum to confer greater or lesser protection to their hosts and in turn how hosts may coevolve with their symbionts to potentially form a mutualistic relationship. However, the consequences of introducing a defensive symbiont for parasite evolution and how the symbiont may coevolve with the parasite have received relatively little theoretical attention. Here, we investigate the ecological and evolutionary implications of introducing a tolerance-conferring defensive symbiont into an established host-parasite system. We show that while the defensive symbiont may initially have a positive impact on the host population, parasite and symbiont evolution tend to have a net negative effect on the host population in the long term. This is because the introduction of the defensive symbiont always selects for an increase in parasite virulence and may cause diversification into high- and low-virulence strains. Even if the symbiont experiences selection for greater host protection, this simply increases selection for virulence in the parasite, resulting in a net negative effect on the host population. Our results therefore suggest that tolerance-conferring defensive symbionts may be poor biocontrol agents for population-level infectious disease control.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2023-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10355178/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10207791","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":"Micro-evolutionary response of spring migration timing in a wild seabird.","authors":"Maria Moiron, Céline Teplitsky, Birgen Haest, Anne Charmantier, Sandra Bouwhuis","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qrad014","DOIUrl":"10.1093/evlett/qrad014","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In the context of rapid climate change, phenological advance is a key adaptation for which evidence is accumulating across taxa. Among vertebrates, phenotypic plasticity is known to underlie most of this phenological change, while evidence for micro-evolution is very limited and challenging to obtain. In this study, we quantified phenotypic and genetic trends in timing of spring migration using 8,032 dates of arrival at the breeding grounds obtained from observations on 1,715 individual common terns (<i>Sterna hirundo</i>) monitored across 27 years, and tested whether these trends were consistent with predictions of a micro-evolutionary response to selection. We observed a strong phenotypic advance of 9.3 days in arrival date, of which c. 5% was accounted for by an advance in breeding values. The Breeder's equation and Robertson's Secondary Theorem of Selection predicted qualitatively similar evolutionary responses to selection, and these theoretical predictions were largely consistent with our estimated genetic pattern. Overall, our study provides rare evidence for micro-evolution underlying (part of) an adaptive response to climate change in the wild, and illustrates how a combination of adaptive micro-evolution and phenotypic plasticity facilitated a shift towards earlier spring migration in this free-living population of common terns.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10872114/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41468374","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":"Is cooperation favored by horizontal gene transfer?","authors":"Thomas W Scott, Stuart A West, Anna E Dewar, Geoff Wild","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qrad003","DOIUrl":"10.1093/evlett/qrad003","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>It has been hypothesized that horizontal gene transfer on plasmids can facilitate the evolution of cooperation, by allowing genes to jump between bacteria, and hence increase genetic relatedness at the cooperative loci. However, we show theoretically that horizontal gene transfer only appreciably increases relatedness when plasmids are rare, where there are many plasmid-free cells available to infect (many opportunities for horizontal gene transfer). In contrast, when plasmids are common, there are few opportunities for horizontal gene transfer, meaning relatedness is not appreciably increased, and so cooperation is not favored. Plasmids, therefore, evolve to be rare and cooperative, or common and noncooperative, meaning plasmid frequency and cooperativeness are never simultaneously high. The overall level of plasmid-mediated cooperation, given by the product of plasmid frequency and cooperativeness, is therefore consistently negligible or low.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10210433/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9568230","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}