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Vertical transmission does not always lead to benign pathogen-host associations. Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2023-08-10 George Shillcock,Francisco Úbeda,Geoff Wild
Understanding the capacity of pathogens to cause severe disease is of fundamental importance to human health and the preservation of biodiversity. Many of those pathogens are not only transmitted horizontally between unrelated hosts but also vertically between parents and their progeny. It is widely accepted that vertical transmission leads to the evolution of less virulent pathogens, but this idea
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The effect of seminal fluid gene expression on paternity. Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2023-08-07 Leigh W Simmons,Maxine Lovegrove
When females mate with more than one male, competition between rival ejaculates is expected to favor adaptations that promote fertilization success. There is now compelling evidence that sperm competition selects for increased production and allocation of sperm. However, sperm comes packaged in ejaculates that also contain protein-rich seminal fluids. Predicting how males should allocate individual
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Equilibria and oscillations in cheat-cooperator dynamics. Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2023-07-22 Ming Liu,Geoff Wild,Stuart A West
Cooperative societies can be threatened by cheats, who invest less in cooperation and exploit the contributions of others. The impact of cheats depends on the extent to which they are maintained in the population. However, different empirical studies, across organisms ranging from RNA replicators to bacteria, have shown diverse cheat-cooperator dynamics. These vary from approaching a stable equilibrium
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Pleistocene glaciations caused the latitudinal gradient of within-species genetic diversity. Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2023-07-19 Emanuel M Fonseca,Tara A Pelletier,Sydney K Decker,Danielle J Parsons,Bryan C Carstens
Intraspecific genetic diversity is a key aspect of biodiversity. Quaternary climatic change and glaciation influenced intraspecific genetic diversity by promoting range shifts and population size change. However, the extent to which glaciation affected genetic diversity on a global scale is not well established. Here we quantify nucleotide diversity, a common metric of intraspecific genetic diversity
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Coprophagy rapidly matures juvenile gut microbiota in a precocial bird. Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2023-06-12 Elin Videvall,Hanna M Bensch,Anel Engelbrecht,Schalk Cloete,Charlie K Cornwallis
Coprophagy is a behavior where animals consume feces, and has been observed across a wide range of species, including birds and mammals. The phenomenon is particularly prevalent in juveniles, but the reasons for this remain unclear. One hypothesis is that coprophagy enables offspring to acquire beneficial gut microbes that aid development. However, despite the potential importance of this behavior
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The coevolutionary dynamics of cryptic female choice. Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2023-06-07 Matthew C Kustra,Suzanne H Alonzo
In contrast to sexual selection on traits that affect interactions between the sexes before mating, little theoretical research has focused on the coevolution of postmating traits via cryptic female choice (when females bias fertilization toward specific males). We used simulation models to ask (a) whether and, if so, how nondirectional cryptic female choice (female-by-male interactions in fertilization
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Damaraland mole-rats do not rely on helpers for reproduction or survival. Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2023-05-29 Jack Thorley,Hanna M Bensch,Kyle Finn,Tim Clutton-Brock,Markus Zöttl
In eusocial invertebrates and obligate cooperative breeders, successful reproduction is dependent on assistance from non-breeding group members. Although naked (Heterocephalus glaber) and Damaraland mole-rats (Fukomys damarensis) 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
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Ornaments indicate parasite load only if they are dynamic or parasites are contagious. Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2023-05-25 Liam R Dougherty,Faith Rovenolt,Alexia Luyet,Jukka Jokela,Jessica F Stephenson
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
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Hypermutator emergence in experimental Escherichia coli populations is stress-type dependent. Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2023-05-08 Martijn Callens,Caroline J Rose,Michael Finnegan,François Gatchitch,Léna Simon,Jeanne Hamet,Léa Pradier,Marie-Pierre Dubois,Stéphanie Bedhomme
Genotypes exhibiting an increased mutation rate, called hypermutators, can propagate in microbial populations because they can have an advantage due to the higher supply of beneficial mutations needed for adaptation. Although this is a frequently observed phenomenon in natural and laboratory populations, little is known about the influence of parameters such as the degree of maladaptation, stress intensity
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The evolutionary demise of a social interaction: experimentally induced loss of traits involved in the supply and demand of care. Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2023-05-02 Eleanor K Bladon,Sonia Pascoal,Nancy Bird,Rahia Mashoodh,Rebecca M Kilner
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
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Is cooperation favored by horizontal gene transfer? Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2023-04-24 Thomas W Scott,Stuart A West,Anna E Dewar,Geoff Wild
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
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The role of recognition error in the stability of green-beard genes. Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2023-04-21 Jibeom Choi,Seoeun Lee,Hyun Kim,Junpyo Park
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
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Macroecological diversification of ants is linked to angiosperm evolution. Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2023-03-31 Matthew P Nelsen,Corrie S Moreau,C Kevin Boyce,Richard H Ree
Ants are abundant, diverse, and occupy nearly all habitats and regions of the world. Previous work has demonstrated that ant diversification coincided with the rise of the angiosperms, and that several plant traits evolved as ants began to expand their nesting and foraging habits. In this study, we investigate whether associations with plants enabled niche expansion and are linked to climatic niche
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Recurrent selection and reduction in recombination shape the genomic landscape of divergence across multiple population pairs of Green-backed Tit. Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2023-03-16 Zhiyong Jiang,Gang Song,Xu Luo,Dezhi Zhang,Fumin Lei,Yanhua Qu
Speciation is fundamental for building and maintaining biodiversity. The formation of the highly differentiated genomic regions between diverging taxa has been interpreted as a result of divergence with gene flow, linked selection, and reduction in recombination. It is challenging to unravel these nonexclusive processes in shaping genomic divergence. Here, we investigate the relative roles of these
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Individual- and group-level sex ratios under local mate competition: consequences of infanticide and reproductive dominance. Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2023-02-09 Jussi Lehtonen,Serena Malabusini,Xiaomeng Guo,Ian C W Hardy
Extremely female-biased sex ratios of parasitoid wasps in multiple-foundress groups challenges evolutionary theory which predicts diminishing bias as foundress numbers increase. Recent theory based on foundress cooperation has achieved qualitative rather than quantitative success in explaining bias among parasitoids in the genus Sclerodermus. Here, we develop an explanation, expanding the theory of
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The immediate effects of polyploidization of Spirodela polyrhiza change in a strain-specific way along environmental gradients. Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2023-01-31 Quinten Bafort,Tian Wu,Annelore Natran,Olivier De Clerck,Yves Van de Peer
The immediate effects of plant polyploidization are well characterized and it is generally accepted that these morphological, physiological, developmental, and phenological changes contribute to polyploid establishment. Studies on the environmental dependence of the immediate effects of whole-genome duplication (WGD) are, however, scarce but suggest that these immediate effects are altered by stressful
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Slower-X: reduced efficiency of selection in the early stages of X chromosome evolution. Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2023-01-31 Andrea Mrnjavac,Ksenia A Khudiakova,Nicholas H Barton,Beatriz Vicoso
Differentiated X chromosomes are expected to have higher rates of adaptive divergence than autosomes, if new beneficial mutations are recessive (the "faster-X effect"), largely because these mutations are immediately exposed to selection in males. The evolution of X chromosomes after they stop recombining in males, but before they become hemizygous, has not been well explored theoretically. We use
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Limited host availability disrupts the genetic correlation between virulence and transmission. Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2023-01-31 Diogo P Godinho,Leonor R Rodrigues,Sophie Lefèvre,Laurane Delteil,André F Mira,Inês R Fragata,Sara Magalhães,Alison B Duncan
Virulence is expected to be linked to parasite fitness via transmission. However, it is not clear whether this relationship is genetically determined, nor if it differs when transmission occurs continuously during, or only at the end of, the infection period. Here, we used inbred lines of the macroparasitic spider mite Tetranychus urticae to disentangle genetic vs. nongenetic correlations among traits
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Population genomics of the island thrush elucidates one of earth's great archipelagic radiations. Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2023-01-31 Andrew Hart Reeve,Graham Gower,José Martín Pujolar,Brian Tilston Smith,Bent Petersen,Urban Olsson,Tri Haryoko,Bonny Koane,Gibson Maiah,Mozes P K Blom,Per G P Ericson,Martin Irestedt,Fernando Racimo,Knud Andreas Jønsson
Tropical islands are renowned as natural laboratories for evolutionary study. Lineage radiations across tropical archipelagos are ideal systems for investigating how colonization, speciation, and extinction processes shape biodiversity patterns. The expansion of the island thrush across the Indo-Pacific represents one of the largest yet most perplexing island radiations of any songbird species. The
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Decoupling of sexual signals and their underlying morphology facilitates rapid phenotypic diversification Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-12-18 James H. Gallagher, David M. Zonana, E. Dale Broder, Brianna K. Herner, Robin M. Tinghitella
How novel phenotypes evolve is challenging to imagine because traits are often underlain by numerous integrated phenotypic components, and changes to any one form can disrupt the function of the entire module. Yet novel phenotypes do emerge, and research on adaptive phenotypic evolution suggests that complex traits can diverge while either maintaining existing form–function relationships or through
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The genomic scale of fluctuating selection in a natural plant population Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-12-11 John K. Kelly
This study characterizes evolution at ≈1.86 million Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) within a natural population of yellow monkeyflower (Mimulus guttatus). Most SNPs exhibit minimal change over a span of 23 generations (less than 1% per year), consistent with neutral evolution in a large population. However, several thousand SNPs display strong fluctuations in frequency. Multiple lines of evidence
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Rapid and transient evolution of local adaptation to seasonal host fruits in an invasive pest fly Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-12-08 Laure Olazcuaga, Julien Foucaud, Candice Deschamps, Anne Loiseau, Jean-Loup Claret, Romain Vedovato, Robin Guilhot, Cyril Sévely, Mathieu Gautier, Ruth A. Hufbauer, Nicolas O. Rode, Arnaud Estoup
Both local adaptation and adaptive phenotypic plasticity can influence the match between phenotypic traits and local environmental conditions. Theory predicts that environments stable for multiple generations promote local adaptation, whereas highly heterogeneous environments favor adaptive phenotypic plasticity. However, when environments have periods of stability mixed with heterogeneity, the relative
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Experimental evolution of environmental tolerance, acclimation, and physiological plasticity in a randomly fluctuating environment Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-12-07 Marie Rescan, Nicolas Leurs, Daphné Grulois, Luis-Miguel Chevin
Environmental tolerance curves, representing absolute fitness against the environment, are an empirical assessment of the fundamental niche, and emerge from the phenotypic plasticity of underlying phenotypic traits. Dynamic plastic responses of these traits can lead to acclimation effects, whereby recent past environments impact current fitness. Theory predicts that higher levels of phenotypic plasticity
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The evolution of ageing in cooperative breeders Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-12-01 Jan J. Kreider, Boris H. Kramer, Jan Komdeur, Ido Pen
Cooperatively breeding animals live longer than their solitary counterparts. This has been suggested for birds, mole rats, and social insects. A common explanation for these long lifespans is that cooperative breeding evolves more readily in long-lived species because lower mortality reduces the rate of territory turnover and thus leads to a limitation of breeding territories. Here, we reverse this
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Divergence and introgression among the virilis group of Drosophila Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-11-28 Leeban H. Yusuf, Venera Tyukmaeva, Anneli Hoikkala, Michael G. Ritchie
Speciation with gene flow is now widely regarded as common. However, the frequency of introgression between recently diverged species and the evolutionary consequences of gene flow are still poorly understood. The virilis group of Drosophila contains 12 species that are geographically widespread and show varying levels of prezygotic and postzygotic isolation. Here, we use de novo genome assemblies
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The ecology and quantitative genetics of seed and seedling traits in upland and lowland ecotypes of a perennial grass Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-11-22 Samsad Razzaque, Thomas E. Juenger
Plants have evolved diverse reproductive allocation strategies and seed traits to aid in dispersal, persistence in the seed bank, and establishment. In particular, seed size, dormancy, and early seedling vigor are thought to be key functional traits with important recruitment and fitness consequences across abiotic stress gradients. Selection for favored seed-trait combinations, or against maladaptive
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Impact of Salmonella genome rearrangement on gene expression Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-11-19 Emma V. Waters, Liam A. Tucker, Jana K. Ahmed, John Wain, Gemma C. Langridge
In addition to nucleotide variation, many bacteria also undergo changes at a much larger scale via rearrangement of their genome structure (GS) around long repeat sequences. These rearrangements result in genome fragments shifting position and/or orientation in the genome without necessarily affecting the underlying nucleotide sequence. To date, scalable techniques have not been applied to GS identification
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Sex-dependent effects of parental age on offspring fitness in a cooperatively breeding bird Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-11-16 Alexandra M. Sparks, Martijn Hammers, Jan Komdeur, Terry Burke, David S. Richardson, Hannah L. Dugdale
Parental age can have considerable effects on offspring phenotypes and health. However, intergenerational effects may also have longer term effects on offspring fitness. Few studies have investigated parental age effects on offspring fitness in natural populations while also testing for sex- and environment-specific effects. Further, longitudinal parental age effects may be masked by population-level
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Unique bone microanatomy reveals ancestry of subterranean specializations in mammals Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-11-11 Eli Amson, Torsten M. Scheyer, Quentin Martinez, Achim H. Schwermann, Daisuke Koyabu, Kai He, Reinhard Ziegler
Acquiring a subterranean lifestyle entails a substantial shift for many aspects of terrestrial vertebrates’ biology. Although this lifestyle is associated with multiple instances of convergent evolution, the relative success of some subterranean lineages largely remains unexplained. Here, we focus on the mammalian transitions to life underground, quantifying bone microanatomy through high-resolution
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Limited sex differences in plastic responses suggest evolutionary conservatism of thermal reaction norms: A meta-analysis in insects Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-11-02 Tiit Teder, Kristiina Taits, Ants Kaasik, Toomas Tammaru
Temperature has a profound effect on the growth and development of ectothermic animals. However, the extent to which ecologically driven selection pressures can adjust thermal plastic responses in growth schedules is not well understood. Comparing temperature-induced plastic responses between sexes provides a promising but underexploited approach to evaluating the evolvability of thermal reaction norms:
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Hosts, microbiomes, and the evolution of critical windows Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-10-27 C. Jessica E. Metcalf, Burcu Tepekule, Marjolein Bruijning, Britt Koskella
The absence of microbial exposure early in life leaves individuals vulnerable to immune overreaction later in life, manifesting as immunopathology, autoimmunity, or allergies. A key factor is thought to be a “critical window” during which the host's immune system can “learn” tolerance, and beyond which learning is no longer possible. Animal models indicate that many mechanisms have evolved to enable
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Plant-associate interactions and diversification across trophic levels Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-09-18 Jeremy B. Yoder, Albert Dang, Caitlin MacGregor, Mikhail Plaza
Interactions between species are widely understood to have promoted the diversification of life on Earth, but how interactions spur the formation of new species remains unclear. Interacting species often become locally adapted to each other, but they may also be subject to shared dispersal limitations and environmental conditions. Moreover, theory predicts that different kinds of interactions have
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Differing associations between sex determination and sex-linked inversions in two ecotypes of Littorina saxatilis Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-08-12 Katherine E. Hearn, Eva L. Koch, Sean Stankowski, Roger K. Butlin, Rui Faria, Kerstin Johannesson, Anja M. Westram
Sexual antagonism is a common hypothesis for driving the evolution of sex chromosomes, whereby recombination suppression is favored between sexually antagonistic loci and the sex-determining locus to maintain beneficial combinations of alleles. This results in the formation of a sex-determining region. Chromosomal inversions may contribute to recombination suppression but their precise role in sex
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A need for standardized reporting of introgression: Insights from studies across eukaryotes Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-07-25 Andrius J. Dagilis, David Peede, Jenn M. Coughlan, Gaston I. Jofre, Emmanuel R. R. D'Agostino, Heidi Mavengere, Alexander D. Tate, Daniel R. Matute
With the rise of affordable next-generation sequencing technology, introgression—or the exchange of genetic materials between taxa—has become widely perceived to be a ubiquitous phenomenon in nature. Although this claim is supported by several keystone studies, no thorough assessment of the frequency of introgression across eukaryotes in nature has been performed to date. In this manuscript, we aim
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Interspecific variation in cooperative burrowing behavior by Peromyscus mice Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-07-22 Nicole L. Bedford, Jesse N. Weber, Wenfei Tong, Felix Baier, Ariana Kam, Rebecca A. Greenberg, Hopi E. Hoekstra
Animals often adjust their behavior according to social context, but the capacity for such behavioral flexibility can vary among species. Here, we test for interspecific variation in behavioral flexibility by comparing burrowing behavior across three species of deer mice (genus Peromyscus) with divergent social systems, ranging from promiscuous (Peromyscus leucopus and Peromyscus maniculatus) to monogamous
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Phenotypic but no genetic adaptation in zooplankton 24 years after an abrupt +10°C climate change Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-07-06 Antónia Juliana Pais-Costa, Eva J. P. Lievens, Stella Redón, Marta I. Sánchez, Roula Jabbour-Zahab, Pauline Joncour, Nguyen Van Hoa, Gilbert Van Stappen, Thomas Lenormand
The climate is currently warming fast, threatening biodiversity all over the globe. Populations often adapt rapidly to environmental change, but for climate warming very little evidence is available. Here, we investigate the pattern of adaptation to an extreme +10°C climate change in the wild, following the introduction of brine shrimp Artemia franciscana from San Francisco Bay, USA, to Vinh Chau saltern
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How much does the unguarded X contribute to sex differences in life span? Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-07-05 Tim Connallon, Isobel J. Beasley, Yasmine McDonough, Filip Ruzicka
Females and males often have markedly different mortality rates and life spans, but it is unclear why these forms of sexual dimorphism evolve. The unguarded X hypothesis contends that dimorphic life spans arise from sex differences in X or Z chromosome copy number (i.e., one copy in the “heterogametic” sex; two copies in the “homogametic” sex), which leads to a disproportionate expression of deleterious
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The genomic signature of wild-to-crop introgression during the domestication of scarlet runner bean (Phaseolus coccineus L.) Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-06-15 Azalea Guerra-García, Idalia C. Rojas-Barrera, Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra, Roberto Papa, Daniel Piñero
The scarlet runner bean (Phaseolus coccineus) is one of the five domesticated Phaseolus species. It is cultivated in small-scale agriculture in the highlands of Mesoamerica for its dry seeds and immature pods, and unlike the other domesticated beans, P. coccineus is an open-pollinated legume. Contrasting with its close relative, the common bean, few studies focusing on its domestication history have
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Sex-specific natural selection on SNPs in Silene latifolia Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-05-27 Lynda F. Delph, Keely E. Brown, Luis Diego Ríos, John K. Kelly
Selection that acts in a sex-specific manner causes the evolution of sexual dimorphism. Sex-specific phenotypic selection has been demonstrated in many taxa and can be in the same direction in the two sexes (differing only in magnitude), limited to one sex, or in opposing directions (antagonistic). Attempts to detect the signal of sex-specific selection from genomic data have confronted numerous difficulties
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Strong selective environments determine evolutionary outcome in time-dependent fitness seascapes Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-05-26 Johannes Cairns, Florian Borse, Tommi Mononen, Teppo Hiltunen, Ville Mustonen
The impact of fitness landscape features on evolutionary outcomes has attracted considerable interest in recent decades. However, evolution often occurs under time-dependent selection in so-called fitness seascapes where the landscape is under flux. Fitness seascapes are an inherent feature of natural environments, where the landscape changes owing both to the intrinsic fitness consequences of previous
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Interacting host modifier systems control Wolbachia-induced cytoplasmic incompatibility in a haplodiploid mite Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-05-11 Nicky Wybouw, Frederik Mortier, Dries Bonte
Reproductive parasites such as Wolbachia spread within host populations by inducing cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI). CI occurs when parasite-modified sperm fertilizes uninfected eggs and is typified by great variation in strength across biological systems. In haplodiploid hosts, CI has different phenotypic outcomes depending on whether the fertilized eggs die or develop into males. Genetic conflict
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Context dependence in the symbiosis between Dictyostelium discoideum and Paraburkholderia Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-05-02 Trey J. Scott, David C. Queller, Joan E. Strassmann
Symbiotic interactions change with environmental context. Measuring these context-dependent effects in hosts and symbionts is critical to determining the nature of symbiotic interactions. We investigated context dependence in the symbiosis between social amoeba hosts and their inedible Paraburkholderia bacterial symbionts, where the context is the abundance of host food bacteria. Paraburkholderia have
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Conceptualizing the evolutionary quantitative genetics of phenological life-history events: Breeding time as a plastic threshold trait Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-04-05 Jane M. Reid, Paul Acker
Successfully predicting adaptive phenotypic responses to environmental changes, and predicting resulting population outcomes, requires that additive genetic (co)variances underlying microevolutionary and plastic responses of key traits are adequately estimated on appropriate quantitative scales. Such estimation in turn requires that focal traits, and their underlying quantitative genetic architectures
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Directional selection and the evolution of breeding date in birds, revisited: Hard selection and the evolution of plasticity Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-02-28 Jarrod D. Hadfield, Thomas E. Reed
The mismatch between when individuals breed and when we think they should breed has been a long-standing problem in evolutionary ecology. Price et al. is a classic theory paper in this field and is mainly cited for its most obvious result: if individuals with high nutritional condition breed early, then the advantage of breeding early may be overestimated when information on nutritional condition is
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Population-level variation in parasite resistance due to differences in immune initiation and rate of response Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-02-24 Amanda K. Hund, Lauren E. Fuess, Mariah L. Kenney, Meghan F. Maciejewski, Joseph M. Marini, Kum Chuan Shim, Daniel I. Bolnick
Closely related populations often differ in resistance to a given parasite, as measured by infection success or failure. Yet, the immunological mechanisms of these evolved differences are rarely specified. Does resistance evolve via changes to the host's ability to recognize that an infection exists, actuate an effective immune response, or attenuate that response? We tested whether each of these phases
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From genotype to phenotype: Genetic redundancy and the maintenance of an adaptive polymorphism in the context of high gene flow Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-02-22 Thomas Bataillon, Perrine Gauthier, Palle Villesen, Sylvain Santoni, John D. Thompson, Bodil K. Ehlers
A central question in evolution is how several adaptive phenotypes are maintained within a species. Theory predicts that the genetic determination of a trait, and in particular the amounts of redundancy in the mapping of genotypes to phenotypes, mediates evolutionary outcomes of phenotypic selection. In Mediterranean wild thyme, numerous discrete chemical phenotypes (chemotypes) occur in close geographic
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The evolution of thermal performance in native and invasive populations of Mimulus guttatus Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-02-13 Aleah Querns, Rachel Wooliver, Mario Vallejo-Marín, Seema Nayan Sheth
The rise of globalization has spread organisms beyond their natural range, allowing further opportunity for species to adapt to novel environments and potentially become invaders. Yet, the role of thermal niche evolution in promoting the success of invasive species remains poorly understood. Here, we use thermal performance curves (TPCs) to test hypotheses about thermal adaptation during the invasion
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A reexamination of theoretical arguments that indirect selection on mate preference is likely to be weaker than direct selection Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-02-12 James D. Fry
Female preference for male ornaments or displays can evolve by indirect selection resulting from genetic benefits of mate choices, or by direct selection resulting from nongenetic benefits or selection on sensory systems occurring in other contexts. In an influential paper, Kirkpatrick and Barton used a good-genes model and evolutionary rates estimated from the fossil record to conclude that indirect
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Genome-wide evolutionary response of European oaks during the Anthropocene Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-01-05 Dounia Saleh, Jun Chen, Jean-Charles Leplé, Thibault Leroy, Laura Truffaut, Benjamin Dencausse, Céline Lalanne, Karine Labadie, Isabelle Lesur, Didier Bert, Frédéric Lagane, François Morneau, Jean-Marc Aury, Christophe Plomion, Martin Lascoux, Antoine Kremer
The pace of tree microevolution during Anthropocene warming is largely unknown. We used a retrospective approach to monitor genomic changes in oak trees since the Little Ice Age (LIA). Allelic frequency changes were assessed from whole-genome pooled sequences for four age-structured cohorts of sessile oak (Quercus petraea) dating back to 1680, in each of three different oak forests in France. The genetic
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Frequency dependence and the predictability of evolution in a changing environment Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2021-12-20 Luis-Miguel Chevin, Zachariah Gompert, Patrik Nosil
Frequency-dependent (FD) selection, whereby fitness and selection depend on the genetic or phenotypic composition of the population, arises in numerous ecological contexts (competition, mate choice, crypsis, mimicry, etc.) and can strongly impact evolutionary dynamics. In particular, negative frequency-dependent selection (NFDS) is well known for its ability to potentially maintain stable polymorphisms
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Adaptive divergence and the evolution of hybrid trait mismatch in threespine stickleback Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-01-04 Avneet K. Chhina, Ken A. Thompson, Dolph Schluter
Selection against mismatched traits in hybrids is the phenotypic analogue of intrinsic hybrid incompatibilities. Mismatch occurs when hybrids resemble one parent population for some phenotypic traits and the other parent population for other traits, and is caused by dominance in opposing directions or from segregation of alleles in recombinant hybrids. In this study, we used threespine stickleback
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Age-specific survivorship and fecundity shape genetic diversity in marine fishes Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2021-12-24 Pierre Barry, Thomas Broquet, Pierre-Alexandre Gagnaire
Genetic diversity varies among species due to a range of eco-evolutionary processes that are not fully understood. The neutral theory predicts that the amount of variation in the genome sequence between different individuals of the same species should increase with its effective population size (). In real populations, multiple factors that modulate the variance in reproductive success among individuals
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Frequent origins of traumatic insemination involve convergent shifts in sperm and genital morphology Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2021-12-30 Jeremias N. Brand, Luke J. Harmon, Lukas Schärer
Traumatic insemination is a mating behavior during which the (sperm) donor uses a traumatic intromittent organ to inject an ejaculate through the epidermis of the (sperm) recipient, thereby frequently circumventing the female genitalia. Traumatic insemination occurs widely across animals, but the frequency of its evolution, the intermediate stages via which it originates, and the morphological changes
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Allometric conservatism in the evolution of bird beaks Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2021-12-27 Louie M. K. Rombaut, Elliot J. R. Capp, Christopher R. Cooney, Emma C. Hughes, Zoë K. Varley, Gavin H. Thomas
Evolution can involve periods of rapid divergent adaptation and expansion in the range of diversity, but evolution can also be relatively conservative over certain timescales due to functional, genetic-developmental, and ecological constraints. One way in which evolution may be conservative is in terms of allometry, the scaling relationship between the traits of organisms and body size. Here, we investigate
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Why did the Wolbachia transinfection cross the road? drift, deterministic dynamics, and disease control Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-01-05 Michael Turelli, Nicholas H. Barton
Maternally inherited Wolbachia transinfections are being introduced into natural mosquito populations to reduce the transmission of dengue, Zika, and other arboviruses. Wolbachia-induced cytoplasmic incompatibility provides a frequency-dependent reproductive advantage to infected females that can spread transinfections within and among populations. However, because transinfections generally reduce
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Pollution induces epigenetic effects that are stably transmitted across multiple generations Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-02-03 Ewan Harney, Steve Paterson, Hélène Collin, Brian H.K. Chan, Daimark Bennett, Stewart J. Plaistow
It has been hypothesized that the effects of pollutants on phenotypes can be passed to subsequent generations through epigenetic inheritance, affecting populations long after the removal of a pollutant. But there is still little evidence that pollutants can induce persistent epigenetic effects in animals. Here, we show that low doses of commonly used pollutants induce genome-wide differences in cytosine
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Detection of sexually antagonistic transmission distortions in trio datasets Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-01-28 Elise A. Lucotte, Clara Albiñana, Romain Laurent, Claude Bhérer, , Thomas Bataillon, Bruno Toupance
Sexual dimorphisms are widespread in animals and plants, for morphological as well as physiological traits. Understanding the genetic basis of sexual dimorphism and its evolution is crucial for understanding biological differences between the sexes. Genetic variants with sex-antagonistic effects on fitness are expected to segregate in populations at the early phases of sexual dimorphism emergence.
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Rapid genomic convergent evolution in experimental populations of Trinidadian guppies (Poecilia reticulata) Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2022-01-18 Mijke J. van der Zee, James R. Whiting, Josephine R. Paris, Ron D. Bassar, Joseph Travis, Detlef Weigel, David N. Reznick, Bonnie A. Fraser
Although rapid phenotypic evolution has been documented often, the genomic basis of rapid adaptation to natural environments is largely unknown in multicellular organisms. Population genomic studies of experimental populations of Trinidadian guppies (Poecilia reticulata) provide a unique opportunity to study this phenomenon. Guppy populations that were transplanted from high-predation (HP) to low-predation
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The dynamics of introgression across an avian radiation Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2021-09-28 Sonal Singhal, Graham E. Derryberry, Gustavo A. Bravo, Elizabeth P. Derryberry, Robb T. Brumfield, Michael G. Harvey
Hybridization and resulting introgression can play both a destructive and a creative role in the evolution of diversity. Thus, characterizing when and where introgression is most likely to occur can help us understand the causes of diversification dynamics. Here, we examine the prevalence of and variation in introgression using phylogenomic data from a large (1300+ species), geographically widespread
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Using singleton densities to detect recent selection in Bos taurus Evolut. Lett. (IF 5.0) Pub Date : 2021-11-22 Matthew Hartfield, Nina Aagaard Poulsen, Bernt Guldbrandtsen, Thomas Bataillon
Many quantitative traits are subject to polygenic selection, where several genomic regions undergo small, simultaneous changes in allele frequency that collectively alter a phenotype. The widespread availability of genome data, along with novel statistical techniques, has made it easier to detect these changes. We apply one such method, the “Singleton Density Score” (SDS), to the Holstein breed of