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16 May 2023
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A new and almost perfectly accurate approximation of the eigenvalue effective population size of a dioecious population: comparisons with other estimates and detailed proofs

All you ever wanted to know about Ne in one handy place

Recommended by based on reviews by Jesse ("Jay") Taylor and 1 anonymous reviewer

​Of the four evolutionary forces, three can be straightforwardly summarized both conceptually and mathematically in the context of an allele at a genomic locus.  Mutation (the mutation rate, μ) is simply captured by the per-site, per-generation probability that an allele mutates into a different allele. Recombination (the recombination rate, r) is captured as the probability of recombination between two sites, wherein alleles that are in different genomes in one generation come together in the same genome in the next generation.  Natural selection (the selection coefficient, s) is captured by the probability that an allele is present in the next generation, relative to some reference.  

Random genetic drift – the random fluctuation in allele frequency due to sampling in a finite population - is not so straightforwardly summarized.  The first, and most common way of characterizing evolutionary dynamics in a finite population is the Wright-Fisher model, in which the only deviation from the assumptions of Hardy-Weinberg conditions is finite population size.  Importantly, in a W-F population, mating between diploid individuals is random, which implies self-fertile monoecy, and generations are non-overlapping.  In an ideal W-F population, the probability that a gene copy leaves i descendants in the next generation is the result of binomial sampling of uniting gametes (if the locus is biallelic).  The – and the next word is meaningful – magnitude/strength/rate/power/amount of genetic drift is proportional to 1/2N, where N is the size of the population.  All of the following are affected by genetic drift: (1) the probability that a neutral allele ultimately reaches fixation, (2) the rate of loss of genetic variation within a population, (3) the rate of increase of genetic variance among populations, (4) the amount of genetic variation segregating in a population, (5) the probability of fixation/loss of a weakly selected variant.    

Presumably no real population adheres to ideal W-F conditions, which leads to the notion of "effective population size", Ne (Wright 1931), loosely defined as "the size of an ideal W-F population that experiences an equivalent strength of genetic drift".  Almost always, Ne<N, and any violation of W-F assumptions can affect Ne.  Importantly, Ne can be defined in different ways, and the specific formulation of Ne can have different implications for evolution.  Ne was initially defined in terms of the rate of decrease of heterozygosity (inbreeding effective size) and increase in variance among populations (variance effective size).  Ewens (1979) defined the Eigenvalue effective size (equivalent to the "random extinction" effective size) and elaborated on the conditions under which the various formulations of Ne differ (Ewens 1982).  Nordborg and Krone (2002) defined the effective size in terms of the coalescent, and they identified conditions in which genetic drift cannot be described in terms of a W-F model (Sjodin et al. 2005); also see Karasov et al. (2010); Neher and Shraiman (2011).

Distinct from the issue of defining Ne is the issue of calculating Ne from data, which is the focus of this paper by De Meeus and Noûs (2023).  Pudovkin et al. (1996) showed that the Eigenvalue effective size in a dioecious population can be formulated in terms of excess heterozygosity, which the current authors note is equivalent to formulating Ne in terms of Wright's FIS statistic.  As emphasized by the title, the marquee contribution of this paper is to provide a better approximation of the Eigenvalue effective size in a dioecious population.  Science marches onward, although the empirical utility of this advance is obviously limited, given the tremendous inherent sources of uncertainty in real-world estimates of Ne.  Perhaps more valuable, however, is the extensive set of appendixes, in which detailed derivations are provided for the various formulations of effective size.  By way of analogy, the material presented here can be thought of as an extension of the material presented in section 7.6 of Crow and Kimura (1970), in which the Inbreeding and Variance effective population sizes are derived and compared.  The appendixes should serve as a handy go-to source of detailed theoretical information with respect to the different formulations of effective population size.

REFERENCES

Crow, J. F. and M. Kimura. 1970. An Introduction to Population Genetics Theory. The Blackburn Press, Caldwell, NJ.

De Meeûs, T. and Noûs, C. 2023. A new and almost perfectly accurate approximation of the eigenvalue effective population size of a dioecious population: comparisons with other estimates and detailed proofs. Zenodo, ver. 6 peer-reviewed and recommended by Peer Community in Evolutionary Biology. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7927968

Ewens, W. J. 1979. Mathematical Population Genetics. Springer-Verlag, Berlin.

Ewens, W. J. 1982. On the concept of the effective population size. Theoretical Population Biology 21:373-378. https://doi.org/10.1016/0040-5809(82)90024-7

Karasov, T., P. W. Messer, and D. A. Petrov. 2010. Evidence that adaptation in Drosophila Is not limited by mutation at single sites. Plos Genetics 6. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1000924

Neher, R. A. and B. I. Shraiman. 2011. Genetic Draft and Quasi-Neutrality in Large Facultatively Sexual Populations. Genetics 188:975-U370. https://doi.org/10.1534/genetics.111.128876

Nordborg, M. and S. M. Krone. 2002. Separation of time scales and convergence to the coalescent in structured populations. Pp. 194–232 in M. Slatkin, and M. Veuille, eds. Modern Developments in Theoretical Population Genetics: The Legacy of Gustave Malécot. Oxford University Press, Oxford. https://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~krone/malecot.pdf

Pudovkin, A. I., D. V. Zaykin, and D. Hedgecock. 1996. On the potential for estimating the effective number of breeders from heterozygote-excess in progeny. Genetics 144:383-387. https://doi.org/10.1093/genetics/144.1.383

Sjodin, P., I. Kaj, S. Krone, M. Lascoux, and M. Nordborg. 2005. On the meaning and existence of an effective population size. Genetics 169:1061-1070. https://doi.org/10.1534/genetics.104.026799

Wright, S. 1931. Evolution in Mendelian populations. Genetics 16:0097-0159. https://doi.org/10.1093/genetics/16.2.97

A new and almost perfectly accurate approximation of the eigenvalue effective population size of a dioecious population: comparisons with other estimates and detailed proofsThierry de Meeûs and Camille Noûs<p>The effective population size is an important concept in population genetics. It corresponds to a measure of the speed at which genetic drift affects a given population. Moreover, this is most of the time the only kind of population size that e...Bioinformatics & Computational Biology, Evolutionary Ecology, Evolutionary Theory, Population Genetics / Genomics, Reproduction and SexCharles Baer2023-02-22 16:53:49 View
11 Sep 2017
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Less effective selection leads to larger genomes

Colonisation of subterranean ecosystems leads to larger genome in waterlouse (Aselloidea)

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The total amount of DNA utilized to store hereditary information varies immensely among eukaryotic organisms. Single copy genome sizes – disregarding differences due to ploidy - differ by more than three orders of magnitude ranging from a few million nucleotides (Mb) to hundreds of billions (Gb). With the ever-increasing availability of fully sequenced genomes we now know that most of the difference is due either to whole genome duplication or to variation in the abundance of repetitive elements. Regarding repetitive elements, the evolutionary forces underlying the large variation 'allowing' more or less elements in a genome remain largely elusive. A tentative correlation between an organism's complexity (however this may be adequately measured) and genome size, the so called C-value paradox [1], has long been dismissed. Studies testing for selection on secondary phenotypic effects associated with genome size (cell size, metabolic rates, nutrient availability) have yielded mixed results. Nonadaptive theories capitalizing on a role of deleterious insertion-deletion mutations and genetic drift as the main drivers have likewise received mixed support [2-3]. Overall, most evidence was derived from analyses across broad taxonomical scales [4-6].

Lefébure and colleagues [7] take a different approach. They confine their considerations to a homogeneous, restricted taxonomical group, isopod crustaceans of the superfamily Aselloidea. This taxonomic focus allows the authors to circumvent many of the confounding factors such as phylogenetic inertia, life history divergence and mutation rate variation that tend to trouble analyses across broad taxonomic timescales. Another important feature of the chosen system is the evolutionary independent transition of habitat use that has occurred at least 11 times. One group of species inhabits subterranean ecosystems (groundwater), another group thrives on surface water. Populations of the former live in low-energy habitats and are expected to be outnumbered by their surface dwelling relatives. Interestingly – and a precondition for the study - the groundwater species have significantly larger genomes (up to 137%). With this unique set-up, the authors are able to investigate the link between genome size and evolutionary forces related to a proxy of long-term population size by removing many of the confounding factors a priori.

Upfront, we learn that the dN/dS ratio is higher in the groundwater species. This may either suggest prevalent positive selection or lower efficacy of purifying selection (relaxed constraint) in the group of species in which population sizes are expected to be low. Using a series of population genetic analyses the authors provide compelling evidence for the latter. Analyses are carefully conducted and include models for estimating the intensity and frequency of purifying and positive selection, the DoS (direction of selection) and α statistic. Next the authors also exclude the possibility that increased dN/dS of the subterranean groundwater species may be due to nonfunctionalization, which may result from the subterranean lifestyle.

Overall, these analyses suggest relaxed constraint in smaller populations as the most plausible alternative to explain increased dN/dS ratios. In addition to the efficacy of selection, the authors estimate the timing of the ecological transition under the rationale that the amount of time a species may have been exposed to the subterranean habitat may reflect long term population sizes. To calibrate the 'colonization clock' they apply a neat trick based on the degree of degeneration of the opsin gene (as vision tends to get lost in these habitats). When finally testing which parameters may explain differences in genome size all factors – ecological status, selection efficiency as measured by dN/dS and colonization time - turned out to be significant predictors. Direct estimates of the short term effective population size Ne from polymorphism data, however, did not correlate with genome size. Ruling out the effect of other co-variates such as body size and growth rate the authors conclude that genome size was overall best predicted by long-term population size change upon habitat shift. In that the authors provide convincing evidence that the increase in genome size is linked to a decrease in long-term reduction of selection efficiency of subterranean species. Assuming a bias for insertion mutations over deletion mutations (which is usually the case in eukaryotes) this result is in agreement with the theory of mutational hazard [4-6]. This theory proposed by Michael Lynch postulates that the accumulation of non-functional DNA has a weak deleterious effect that can only be efficiently opposed by natural selection in species with high Ne.

In conclusion, Lefébure and colleagues provide novel and welcome evidence supporting a 'neutralist' hypothesis of genome size evolution without the need to invoke an adaptive component. Methodologically, the study cautions against the common use of polymorphism-based estimates of Ne which are often obfuscated by transitory demographic change. Instead, alternative measures of selection efficacy linked to long-term population size may serve as better predictors of genome size. We hope that this study will stimulate additional work testing the link between Ne and genome size variation in other taxonomical groups [8-9]. Using genome sequences instead of the transcriptome approach applied here may concomitantly further our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying genome size change.

References

[1] Thomas, CA Jr. 1971. The genetic organization of chromosomes. Annual Review of Genetics 5: 237–256. doi: 10.1146/annurev.ge.05.120171.001321

[2] Ågren JA, Greiner S, Johnson MTJ, Wright SI. 2015. No evidence that sex and transposable elements drive genome size variation in evening primroses. Evolution 69: 1053–1062. doi: 10.1111/evo.12627

[3] Bast J, Schaefer I, Schwander T, Maraun M, Scheu S, Kraaijeveld K. 2016. No accumulation of transposable elements in asexual arthropods. Molecular Biology and Evolution 33: 697–706. doi: 10.1093/molbev/msv261

[4] Lynch M. 2007. The Origins of Genome Architecture. Sinauer Associates.

[5] Lynch M, Bobay LM, Catania F, Gout JF, Rho M. 2011. The repatterning of eukaryotic genomes by random genetic drift. Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics 12: 347–366. doi: 10.1146/annurev-genom-082410-101412

[6] Lynch M, Conery JS. 2003. The origins of genome complexity. Science 302: 1401–1404. doi: 10.1126/science.1089370

[7] Lefébure T, Morvan C, Malard F, François C, Konecny-Dupré L, Guéguen L, Weiss-Gayet M, Seguin-Orlando A, Ermini L, Der Sarkissian C, Charrier NP, Eme D, Mermillod-Blondin F, Duret L, Vieira C, Orlando L, and Douady CJ. 2017. Less effective selection leads to larger genomes. Genome Research 27: 1016-1028. doi: 10.1101/gr.212589.116

[8] Lower SS, Johnston JS, Stanger-Hall KF, Hjelmen CE, Hanrahan SJ, Korunes K, Hall D. 2017. Genome size in North American fireflies: Substantial variation likely driven by neutral processes. Genome Biolology and Evolution 9: 1499–1512. doi: 10.1093/gbe/evx097

[9] Sessegolo C, Burlet N, Haudry A. 2016. Strong phylogenetic inertia on genome size and transposable element content among 26 species of flies. Biology Letters 12: 20160407. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2016.0407

Less effective selection leads to larger genomesTristan Lefébure, Claire Morvan, Florian Malard, Clémentine François, Lara Konecny-Dupré, Laurent Guéguen, Michèle Weiss-Gayet, Andaine Seguin-Orlando, Luca Ermini, Clio Der Sarkissian, N. Pierre Charrier, David Eme, Florian Mermillod-Blondin, Lau...<p>The evolutionary origin of the striking genome size variations found in eukaryotes remains enigmatic. The effective size of populations, by controlling selection efficacy, is expected to be a key parameter underlying genome size evolution. Howe...Evolutionary Theory, Genome Evolution, Molecular Evolution, Population Genetics / GenomicsBenoit Nabholz2017-09-08 09:39:23 View
05 May 2020
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Meta-population structure and the evolutionary transition to multicellularity

The ecology of evolutionary transitions to multicellularity

Recommended by based on reviews by 2 anonymous reviewers

The evolutionary transition to multicellular life from free-living, single-celled ancestors has occurred independently in multiple lineages [1-5]. This evolutionary transition to cooperative group living can be difficult to explain given the fitness advantages enjoyed by the non-cooperative, single-celled organisms that still numerically dominate life on earth [1,6,7]. Although several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the transition to multicellularity, a common theme is the abatement of the efficacy of natural selection among the single cells during the free-living stage and the promotion of the efficacy of selection among groups of cells during the cooperative stage, an argument reminiscent of those from George Williams’ seminal book [8,9]. The evolution of life cycles appears to be a key step in the transition to multicellularity as it can align fitness advantages of the single-celled 'reproductive' stage with that of the cooperative 'organismal' stage [9-12]. That is, the evolution of life cycles allows natural selection to operate over timescales longer than that of the doubling time of the free-living cells [13]. Despite the importance of this issue, identifying the range of ecological conditions that reduce the importance of natural selection at the single-celled, free-living stage and increase the importance of selection among groups of cooperating cells has not been addressed empirically.
Rose et al [14] addressed this issue in a series of real time evolution experiments with bacteria in which they varied the intensity of between-group versus individual-level selection. Central to the experiment is an ecological scaffold that requires lineages to switch between free-living (reproductive) and group-living (organismal) life-stages. One ecological scenario severely limited natural selection at the single-celled, free-living stage by maintaining separation among the reproductive propagules originating from different organisms (groups of cells derived from a single ancestral cell). A second ecological scenario mixed the reproductive propagules from different organisms, leading to severe competition between single cells derived from both the same and other 'organisms'. These ecological scenarios lead to very different evolutionary outcomes. Limiting competition, and thus natural selection, at the reproductive propagule stage promoted traits that favored organismal fitness at the expense of cell division, while competition among single-cells favored traits that promote cell-level traits at the expense of group-level traits. The authors investigate a range of measures of cell and group-level performance in order to understand the mechanisms favoring organismal versus single-cell fitness. Importantly, an evolutionary trade-off between traits promoting organismal fitness and single-cell fitness appears to constrain maximizing fitness of both phases, especially when strong natural selection acts on the single-cell stage.
This article is incredibly thorough and utilizes multiple experiments and levels of argument in order to support the conclusions. The authors include considerable discussion of broader topics surrounding the immediate hypotheses throughout the article, which add both clarity and complexity. The complexity of the experiments, results, and the topic itself lead to a thought-heavy article in a throwback to the monographs of old; expect to read each section multiple times.

References

[1] Maynard Smith, J. and Szathmáry, E. (1995). The Major Transitions in Evolution. Oxford, UK: Freeman. p 346.
[2] Bonner, J. T. (1998). The origins of multicellularity. Integrative Biology: Issues, News, and Reviews: Published in Association with The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, 1(1), 27-36. doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1520-6602(1998)1:1<27::AID-INBI4>3.0.CO;2-6
[3] Kaiser, D. (2001). Building a multicellular organism. Annual review of genetics, 35(1), 103-123. doi: 10.1146/annurev.genet.35.102401.090145
[4] Medina, M., Collins, A. G., Taylor, J. W., Valentine, J. W., Lipps, J. H., Amaral-Zettler, L., and Sogin, M. L. (2003). Phylogeny of Opisthokonta and the evolution of multicellularity and complexity in Fungi and Metazoa. International Journal of Astrobiology, 2(3), 203-211. doi: 10.1017/S1473550403001551
[5] King, N. (2004). The unicellular ancestry of animal development. Developmental cell, 7(3), 313-325. doi: 10.1016/j.devcel.2004.08.010
[6] Michod R. E. (1999). Darwinian Dynamics. Evolutionary Transitions in Fitness and Individuality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press. p 262.
[7] Lynch, M. (2007). The frailty of adaptive hypotheses for the origins of organismal complexity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(suppl 1), 8597-8604. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0702207104
[8] Williams, G. C. (1996). Adaptation and Natural Selection, Reprint edition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
[9] Grosberg, R. K., and Strathmann, R. R. (2007). The evolution of multicellularity: a minor major transition?. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Evol. Syst., 38, 621-654. doi: 10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.36.102403.114735
[10] Buss, L. W. (1987). The Evolution of Individuality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
[11] Godfrey-Smith, P. (2009). Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection. Oxford University Press, USA.
[12] Van Gestel, J., and Tarnita, C. E. (2017). On the origin of biological construction, with a focus on multicellularity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(42), 11018-11026. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1704631114
[13] Black, A. J., Bourrat, P., and Rainey, P. B. (2020). Ecological scaffolding and the evolution of individuality. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 4(3), 426-436. doi: 10.1038/s41559-019-1086-9
[14] Rose, C. J., Hammerschmidt, K., Pichugin, Y. and Rainey, P. B. (2020). Meta-population structure and the evolutionary transition to multicellularity. bioRxiv, 407163, ver. 5 peer-reviewed and recommended by PCI Evolutionary Biology. doi: 10.1101/407163

Meta-population structure and the evolutionary transition to multicellularityCaroline J Rose, Katrin Hammerschmidt, Yuriy Pichugin and Paul B Rainey<p>The evolutionary transition to multicellularity has occurred on numerous occasions, but transitions to complex life forms are rare. While the reasons are unclear, relevant factors include the intensity of within- versus between-group selection ...Adaptation, Evolutionary Dynamics, Experimental EvolutionDustin Brisson2019-04-04 12:26:36 View
31 May 2024
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Cross-tolerance evolution is driven by selection of heat tolerance in Drosophila subobscura

Evolution of cross-tolerance: a mechanism to cope with climate change?

Recommended by ORCID_LOGO based on reviews by Marina Stamenkovic-Radak and 1 anonymous reviewer

Understanding how populations evolve under thermal stress and how this process shapes the response of other stress responses is an important research topic in the context of thermal adaptation and climate change. In a thermal experimental evolution study in Drosophila subobscura, Castañeda (2024) addressed the correlated responses to selection for increasing knockdown temperature in different resistance traits, either directly related to thermal stress (e.g. knockdown time at different temperatures and CTmax) or not (e.g. desiccation and starvation resistance). 

The author found that the evolution of higher knockdown temperature did in fact lead to correlated responses in other stress traits. While such correlations might be expected for the thermal stress traits measured (knockdown time and CTmax), it was perhaps less expectable for desiccation and starvation resistance. However, the general occurrence of correlated evolutionary responses between stressors has been previously described, namely in Drosophila (e.g. see Bubliy and Loeschcke 2005), pointing to a possible genetic link between distinct (thermal) stress traits. 

There are however some features that make the findings of this study rather appealing. First, the evidence that the correlated stress responses depend on the intensity of thermal selection (i.e. the warming rate) and on the sex of the organisms. Second, correlated patterns of both desiccation and starvation resistance highlight the possibility of the evolution of a cross-tolerance response, which might positively impact on population ability to evolve under sustained stressful environments (Rodgers and Gomez Izasa 2023). However, it is important to point out that the correlated patterns between these two resistance traits (desiccation and starvation) were not exactly consistent. In fact, the negative correlated response observed for female starvation resistance is thought provoking and argues again a general scenario of cross-tolerance. 

While these findings are a step forward for a more multifaceted understanding of thermal adaptation in the context of stressful environments, they also highlight the need for further studies of thermal adaptation namely 1) addressing the underlying physiological and genomic mechanisms that link male and female heat tolerance and the response to other stress resistance traits (namely starvation resistance); 2) testing the extent to which cross-resistance patterns can be generalized to different thermal selection contexts and populations. 

In addition, this study also opens new questions considering the scope of correlated evolution to other stress traits, that might be relevant in diverse ecological scenarios. For instance, does selection towards higher heat resistance lead to correlated evolution of cold resistance? And under which circumstances (e.g. different heat selection intensities)?  In fact, the occurrence of a positive (or negative) correlation cold and heat stress responses is a topic of high interest, with relevant ecological implications particularly considering the increased thermal fluctuations in natural environments because of climate warming. Cross-tolerance between cold and heat stress responses has been described (Singh 2022, Rodgers and Gomez Izasa 2023). On the other hand, negative correlations (i.e. trade-offs) between these stress traits (Stazione et al. 2020; Schou et al 2022) can impact negatively on populations’ ability to withstand thermal variability. 

As climatic changes proceed leading to increasing environmental variability, empirical studies such as that of Castañeda (2024) are critical in the pursue for a multivariate perspective on trait evolution in scenarios of climate change adaptation. Understanding how tolerance to different environmental stressors may evolve and which factors can act as drivers of that variation will ultimately enable better forecasts of climate change effects on biodiversity in nature.

References

Castañeda, LE. Cross-tolerance evolution is driven by selection on heat tolerance in Drosophila subobscura. Biorxiv, ver. 4 peer-reviewed and recommended by Peer Community in Evolutionary Biology (2024). https://www.doi.org/10.1101/2023.09.05.556367

Bubliy, OA, Loeschcke, V. Correlated responses to selection for stress resistance and longevity in a laboratory population of Drosophila melanogaster. J Evol Biol. 18(4):789-803 (2005). https://www.doi.org/10.1111/j.1420-9101.2005.00928.x

Rodgers, EM, Gomez Isaza, DF. The mechanistic basis and adaptive significance of cross-tolerance: a 'pre-adaptation' to a changing world? J Exp Biol. 226(11):jeb245644 (2023). https://www.doi.org/10.1242/jeb.245644

Schou, MF, Engelbrecht, A, Brand, Z, Svensson, EI, Cloete, S, Cornwallis, CK. Evolutionary trade-offs between heat and cold tolerance limit responses to fluctuating climates. Sci Adv. 8(21):eabn9580 (2022). https://www.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abn9580

Singh, K, Arun Samant, M, Prasad, NG. Evolution of cross-tolerance in Drosophila melanogaster as a result of increased resistance to cold stress. Sci Rep. 12(1):19536 (2022). https://www.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-23674-z.

Stazione, L, Norry, FM, Gomez, FH, Sambucetti, P. Heat knockdown resistance and chill-coma recovery as correlated responses to selection on mating success at high temperature in Drosophila buzzatii. Ecol Evol. 10(4):1998-2006 (2020). https://www.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.6032.

Cross-tolerance evolution is driven by selection of heat tolerance in *Drosophila subobscura*Luis E. Castañeda<p>The evolution of heat tolerance is a crucial mechanism for the adaptive response to global warming, but it depends on the genetic variance carried by populations and on the intensity of thermal stress in nature. Experimental selection studies h...Adaptation, Experimental EvolutionPedro Simões2023-10-02 14:13:02 View
09 Dec 2019
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Trait-specific trade-offs prevent niche expansion in two parasites

Trade-offs in fitness components and ecological source-sink dynamics affect host specialisation in two parasites of Artemia shrimps

Recommended by ORCID_LOGO based on reviews by Anne Duplouy, Seth Barribeau and Cindy Gidoin

Ecological specialisation, especially among parasites infecting a set of host species, is ubiquitous in nature. Host specialisation can be understood as resulting from trade-offs in parasite infectivity, virulence and growth. However, it is not well understood how variation in these trade-offs shapes the overall fitness trade-off a parasite faces when adapting to multiple hosts. For instance, it is not clear whether a strong trade-off in one fitness component may sufficiently constrain the evolution of a generalist parasite despite weak trade-offs in other components. A second mechanism explaining variation in specialisation among species is habitat availability and quality. Rare habitats or habitats that act as ecological sinks will not allow a species to persist and adapt, preventing a generalist phenotype to evolve. Understanding the prevalence of those mechanisms in natural systems is crucial to understand the emergence and maintenance of host specialisation, and biodiversity in general. In their study "Trait-specific trade-offs prevent niche expansion in two parasites", Lievens *et al.* [1] report the results of an evolution experiment involving two parasitic microsporidians, *Anostracospora rigaudi* and *Enterocytospora artemiae*, infecting two sympatric species of brine shrimp, *Artemia franciscana* and *Artemia parthenogenetica*. The two parasites were originally specialised on their primary host: *A. rigaudi* on *A. parthenogenetica* and *E. artemiae* on *A. franciscana*, although they encounter both species in the wild but at different rates. After passaging each parasite on each single host and on both hosts alternatively, Lievens *et al.* asked how host specialisation evolved. They found no change in specialisation at the fitness level in *A. rigaudi* in either treatment, while *E. artemiae* became more of a generalist after having been exposed to its secondary host, *A. parthenogenetica*. The most interesting part of the study is the decomposition of the fitness trade-off into its underlying trade-offs in spore production, infectivity and virulence. Both species remained specialised for spore production on their primary host, interpreted as caused by a strong trade-off between hosts preventing improvements on the secondary host. *A. rigaudi* evolved reduced virulence on its primary host without changes in the overall fitness trad-off, while *E. artemiae* evolved higher infectivity on its secondary host making it a more generalist parasite and revealing a weak trade-off for this trait and for fitness. Nevertheless, both parasites retained higher fitness on their primary host because of the lack of an evolutionary response in spore production. This study made two important points. First, it showed that despite apparent strong trade-off in spore production, a weak trade-off in infectivity allowed *E. artemiae* to become less specialised. In contrast, *A. rigaudi* remained specialised, presumably because the strong trade-off in spore production was the overriding factor. The fitness trade-off that results from the superposition of multiple underlying trade-offs is thus difficult to predict, yet crucial to understand potential evolutionary outcomes. A second insight is related to the ecological context of the evolution of specialisation. The results showed that *E. artemiae* should be less specialised than observed, which points to a role played by source-sink dynamics on *A. parthenogenetica* in the wild. The experimental approach of Lievens *et al.* thus allowed them to nicely disentangle the various sources of constraints on the evolution of host adaptation in the *Artemia* system. **References** [1] Lievens, E.J.P., Michalakis, Y. and Lenormand, T. (2019). Trait-specific trade-offs prevent niche expansion in two parasites. bioRxiv, 621581, ver. 4 peer-reviewed and recommended by PCI Evolutionary Biology. doi: [10.1101/621581](https://dx.doi.org/10.1101/621581)

Trait-specific trade-offs prevent niche expansion in two parasitesEva JP Lievens, Yannis Michalakis, Thomas Lenormand<p>The evolution of host specialization has been studied intensively, yet it is still often difficult to determine why parasites do not evolve broader niches – in particular when the available hosts are closely related and ecologically similar. He...Adaptation, Evolutionary Ecology, Evolutionary Epidemiology, Experimental Evolution, Life History, Species interactionsFrédéric Guillaume2019-05-13 13:44:34 View
28 Sep 2020
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Evolution and genetic architecture of disassortative mating at a locus under heterozygote advantage

Evolutionary insights into disassortative mating and its association to an ecologically relevant supergene

Recommended by ORCID_LOGO based on reviews by Tom Van Dooren and 2 anonymous reviewers

*Heliconius* butterflies are famous for their colorful wing patterns acting as a warning of their chemical defenses [1]. Most species are involved in Müllerian mimicry assemblies, as predators learn to associate common wing patterns with unpalatability and preferentially target rare variants. Such positive-frequency dependent selection homogenizes wing patterns at different localities, and in several species, all individuals within a community belong to the same morph [2]. In this respect, *H. numata* stands out. This species shows stable local polymorphism across multiple localities, with local populations home to up to seven distinct morphs [2]. Although a balance between migration and local positive-frequency dependent selection can allow some degree of local polymorphism, theory suggests that this occurs only when migration is within a narrow window [3]. One factor that potentially enhances local polymorphism in *H. numata* is disassortative mating. Mate choice assays have in fact revealed that females of this species tend to reject males with the same wing pattern [4]. However the evolution of such mating behavior and its effect on polymorphism remain unclear when selection is locally positive-frequency dependent. Using a mathematical model, Maisonneuve *et al.* [5] clarify the conditions that favor the evolution of disassortative mating in the complicated system of *H. numata*. In particular, they investigate whether the genetic basis of wing colour can favor the emergence of disassortative mating. Variation in wing pattern in *H. numata* is controlled by the supergene P, which is a single genomic region harboring multiple protein coding genes that have ceased to recombine due to chromosomal inversions [6]. If such remarkable genetic configuration allows for the co-adaptation of multiple loci participating to a complex phenotype such as wing color pattern, the absence of recombination can also result in the accumulation of deleterious mutations [7]. In fact, alleles at the P locus have been associated with a recessive genetic load, leading to a fitness advantage for heterozygotes at this locus [8]. Can this fitness advantage to heterozygotes lead to the evolution of disassortative mating? And if so, can such evolution lead to the maintenance of local polymorphism in spite of strong positive frequency-dependent selection? To investigate these questions, Maisonneuve *et al.* [5] model evolution at two loci, one is the P locus for wing pattern, and the other influences mating behavior. The population is divided among two connected patches that differ in their butterfly communities, so that different alleles at the P locus are favored by positive frequency-dependent selection in different patches. The different alleles at the P locus are ordered in dominance relationships such that the most dominant over wing color pattern are also those with the highest load. By tracking the dynamics of haplotype frequencies in the population, the authors first show that disassortative mating readily evolves via the invasion of an allele causing females carrying it to reject males that resemble them phenotypically. Such “self-referencing” mechanism of mate choice, however, has never been reported and has been argued to be rare due to its complicated nature [9]. Maisonneuve *et al.* [5] then compare the evolution of disassortative mating via two alternative mechanisms: attraction and rejection. In these cases, alleles at the mating locus determine attraction to or rejection of specific phenotypes (e.g., under attraction rule, allele “B” encodes attraction to males with phenotype B). With the P and mating loci fully linked, disassortative mating can evolve under all three mechanisms (self-referencing, attraction and rejection), but tends to be less prevalent at equilibrium under attraction rule. This in turn results in the maintenance of less genetic variation under attraction compared to the other mating mechanisms. The loss of variation that occurs under attraction rules is due to a combination of dominance relationships between alleles at the P locus and the searching cost to females in finding rare types of males. When a particular wing pattern, say B, is only expressed in homozygotic form, B males are relatively rare. Females that carry the allele at the mating locus causing them to be attracted to such males then suffer a fitness cost due to lost mating opportunities. This mating allele is therefore purged, and in turn so is the recessive allele for B phenotype at the P locus. Under self-referencing and rejection rules, however, choosy females only reject males of a specific phenotype. They can therefore potentially mate with larger pool of males than females attracted to a single type. As a result, self-referencing and rejection rules are less sensitive to demographic effects and so are more conducive to disassortative mating evolution. In their final analysis, Maisonneuve *et al.* [5] investigate the influence of recombination among the P and mating loci. They show that recombination has different effects on disassortative mating evolution depending on the mechanism of mate choice. Under the self-referencing rule, loose linkage leads to higher levels of disassortative mating and polymorphism than when linkage is tight. Under attraction or rejection rule, however, even very limited recombination completely inhibits the evolution of disassortative mating. This is because, with alleles at the mating locus coding for attraction/rejection to specific males, recombination breaks the association between the P and mating loci necessary for disassortative mating. By contrast, disassortative mating via a self-referencing rule does not depend on the linkage among the P and mating loci: females choose males that are different to themselves independently from the alleles they carry at the P locus. Taken together, Maisonneuve *et al.*’s analyses [5] show that disassortative mating can readily evolve in a system like *H. numata*, but that this evolution depends on the genetic architecture of mating behavior. The architectures that are more conducive to the evolution of disassortative mating are: (1) epistatic interactions among the P and mating loci such that females are able to recognize their own phenotype and base their mating decision upon this information (self-referencing rule); and (2) full linkage among the P supergene and a mating locus that triggers rejection of a specific color pattern. While the mechanisms behind disassortative mating remain to be elucidated, assortative mating seems to rely on alleles triggering attraction to specific cues with variation in attraction and cues linked together [10]. These observations support the notion that disassortative mating is due to alleles causing rejection, in tight linkage to the P locus. If so, mating loci would in fact be part of the P supergene, thus controlling not only intricate wing color pattern but also mating behavior. Beyond the specific system of *H. numata*, Maisonneuve *et al.*’s study [5] helps understand the evolution of disassortative mating and its association with the genetic architecture of correlated traits. In particular, Maisonneuve *et al.* [5] expands the role of supergenes for ecologically relevant traits to mating behavior, further bolstering the relevance of these remarkable genetic elements in the maintenance of variation in complex and elaborate phenotypes. **References** [1] Merrill, R M, K K Dasmahapatra, J W Davey, D D Dell'Aglio, J J Hanly, B Huber, C D Jiggins, et al. (2015). The Diversification of Heliconius butterflies: What Have We Learned in 150 Years? Journal of Evolutionary Biology 28 (8), 1417–38. [https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.12672.](https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.12672.) [2] Joron M, IR Wynne, G Lamas, and J Mallet (1999). Variable selection and the coexistence of multiple mimetic forms of the butterfly Heliconius numata. Evolutionary Ecology 13, 721– 754. [https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010875213123](https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010875213123) [3] Joron M and Y Iwasa (2005). The evolution of a Müllerian mimic in a spatially distributed community. Journal of Theoretical Biology 237, 87–103. [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2005.04.005](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2005.04.005) [4] Chouteau M, V Llaurens, F Piron-Prunier, and M Joron (2017). Polymorphism at a mimicry su- pergene maintained by opposing frequency-dependent selection pressures. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114, 8325–8329. [https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1702482114](https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1702482114) [5] Maisonneuve, L, Chouteau, M, Joron, M and Llaurens, V. (2020). Evolution and genetic architecture of disassortative mating at a locus under heterozygote advantage. bioRxiv, 616409, ver. 9 peer-reviewed and recommended by PCI Evolutionary Biology. [https://doi.org/10.1101/616409](https://doi.org/10.1101/616409) [6] Joron M, L Frezal, RT Jones, NL Chamberlain, SF Lee, CR Haag, A Whibley, M Becuwe, SW Baxter, L Ferguson, et al. (2011). Chromosomal rearrangements maintain a polymorphic super- gene controlling butterfly mimicry. Nature 477, 203. [https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10341](https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10341) [7] Schwander T, R Libbrecht, and L Keller (2014). Supergenes and Complex Phenotypes.” Current Biology. 24 (7), 288–94. [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.01.056.](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.01.056.) [8] Jay P, M Chouteau, A Whibley, H Bastide, V Llaurens, H Parrinello, and M Joron (2019). Mutation accumulation in chromosomal inversions maintains wing pattern polymorphism in a butterfly. bioRxiv. [https://doi.org/ 10.1101/736504. ](https://doi.org/ 10.1101/736504. ) [9] Kopp M, MR Servedio, TC Mendelson, RJ Safran, RL Rodrıguez, ME Hauber, EC Scordato, LB Symes, CN Balakrishnan, DM Zonana, et al. (2018). Mechanisms of assortative mating in speciation with gene flow: connecting theory and empirical research. The American Naturalist 191, 1–20. [https://doi.org/10.1086/694889](https://doi.org/10.1086/694889) [10] Merrill RM, P Rastas, SH Martin, MC Melo, S Barker, J Davey, WO McMillan, and CD Jiggins (2019). Genetic dissection of assortative mating behavior. PLoS biology 17, e2005902. [https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2005902](https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2005902)

Evolution and genetic architecture of disassortative mating at a locus under heterozygote advantageLudovic Maisonneuve, Mathieu Joron, Mathieu Chouteau and Violaine Llaurens<p>The evolution of mate preferences may depend on natural selection acting on the mating cues and on the underlying genetic architecture. While the evolution of assortative mating with respect to locally adapted traits has been well-characterized...Evolutionary Theory, Population Genetics / Genomics, Reproduction and Sex, Sexual SelectionCharles Mullon2019-10-29 09:55:18 View
11 Jul 2022
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Mutualists construct the ecological conditions that trigger the transition from parasitism

Give them some space: how spatial structure affects the evolutionary transition towards mutualistic symbiosis

Recommended by ORCID_LOGO based on reviews by Eva Kisdi and 3 anonymous reviewers

The evolution of mutualistic symbiosis is a puzzle that has fascinated evolutionary ecologist for quite a while. Data on transitions between symbiotic bacterial ways of life has evidenced shifts from mutualism towards parasitism and vice versa (Sachs et al., 2011), so there does not seem to be a strong determinism on those transitions. From the host’s perspective, mutualistic symbiosis implies at the very least some form of immune tolerance, which can be costly (e.g. Sorci, 2013). Empirical approaches thus raise very important questions: How can symbiosis turn from parasitism into mutualism when it seemingly needs such a strong alignment of selective pressures on both the host and the symbiont? And yet why is mutualistic symbiosis so widespread and so important to the evolution of macro-organisms (Margulis, 1998)?

While much of the theoretical literature on the evolution of symbiosis and mutualism has focused on either the stability of such relationships when non-mutualists can invade the host-symbiont system (e.g. Ferrière et al., 2007) or the effect of the mode of symbiont transmission on the evolutionary dynamics of mutualism (e.g. Genkai-Kato and Yamamura, 1999), the question remains whether and under which conditions parasitic symbiosis can turn into mutualism in the first place. Earlier results suggested that spatial demographic heterogeneity between host populations could be the leading determinant of evolution towards mutualism or parasitism (Hochberg et al., 2000). Here, Ledru et al. (2022) investigate this question in an innovative way by simulating host-symbiont evolutionary dynamics in a spatially explicit context. Their hypothesis is intuitive but its plausibility is difficult to gauge without a model: Does the evolution towards mutualism depend on the ability of the host and symbiont to evolve towards close-range dispersal in order to maintain clusters of efficient host-symbiont associations, thus outcompeting non-mutualists?

I strongly recommend reading this paper as the results obtained by the authors are very clear: competition strength and the cost of dispersal both affect the likelihood of the transition from parasitism to mutualism, and once mutualism has set in, symbiont trait values clearly segregate between highly dispersive parasites and philopatric mutualists. The demonstration of the plausibility of their hypothesis is accomplished with brio and thoroughness as the authors also examine the conditions under which the transition can be reversed, the impact of the spatial range of competition and the effect of mortality. Since high dispersal cost and strong, long-range competition appear to be the main factors driving the evolutionary transition towards mutualistic symbiosis, now is the time for empiricists to start investigating this question with spatial structure in mind.

References

Ferrière, R., Gauduchon, M. and Bronstein, J. L. (2007) Evolution and persistence of obligate mutualists and exploiters: competition for partners and evolutionary immunization. Ecology Letters, 10, 115-126. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2006.01008.x

Genkai-Kato, M. and Yamamura, N. (1999) Evolution of mutualistic symbiosis without vertical transmission. Theoretical Population Biology, 55, 309-323. https://doi.org/10.1006/tpbi.1998.1407

Hochberg, M. E., Gomulkiewicz, R., Holt, R. D. and Thompson, J. N. (2000) Weak sinks could cradle mutualistic symbioses - strong sources should harbour parasitic symbioses. Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 13, 213-222. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1420-9101.2000.00157.x

Ledru L, Garnier J, Rohr M, Noûs C and Ibanez S (2022) Mutualists construct the ecological conditions that trigger the transition from parasitism. bioRxiv, 2021.08.18.456759, ver. 5 peer-reviewed and recommended by Peer Community in Evolutionary Biology. https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.18.456759

Margulis, L. (1998) Symbiotic planet: a new look at evolution, Basic Books, Amherst.

Sachs, J. L., Skophammer, R. G. and Regus, J. U. (2011) Evolutionary transitions in bacterial symbiosis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108, 10800-10807. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1100304108

Sorci, G. (2013) Immunity, resistance and tolerance in bird–parasite interactions. Parasite Immunology, 35, 350-361. https://doi.org/10.1111/pim.12047

Mutualists construct the ecological conditions that trigger the transition from parasitismLeo Ledru, Jimmy Garnier, Matthias Rohr, Camille Nous, Sebastien Ibanez<p>The evolution of mutualism between hosts and initially parasitic symbionts represents a major transition in evolution. Although vertical transmission of symbionts during host reproduction and partner control both favour the stability of mutuali...Evolutionary Ecology, Species interactionsFrancois Massol2021-08-20 12:25:40 View
04 Jul 2022
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A genomic assessment of the marine-speciation paradox within the toothed whale superfamily Delphinoidea

Reticulated evolution marks the rapid diversification of the Delphinoidae

Recommended by based on reviews by Christelle Fraïsse, Simon Henry Martin, Andrew Foote and 2 anonymous reviewers

Historically neglected or considered a rare aberration in animals under the biological species concept, interspecific hybridisation has by now been recognised to be taxonomically widespread, particularly in rapidly diversifying groups (Dagilis et al. 2021; Edelman & Mallet 2021; Mallet et al. 2016; Seehausen 2004). Yet the prevalence of introgressive hybridizations, its evolutionary significance, and its impact on species diversification remain a hot topic of research in evolutionary biology. The rapid increase in genomic resources now available for non-model species has significantly contributed to the detection of introgressive hybridization across taxa showing that reticulated evolution is far more common in the animal kingdom than historically considered. Yet, detecting it, quantifying its magnitude, and assessing its evolutionary significance remains a challenging endeavour with constantly evolving methodologies to better explore and exploit genomic data (Blair & Ané 2020; Degnan & Rosenberg 2009; Edelman & Mallet 2021; Hibbins & Hahn 2022).

In the marine realm, the dearth of geographic barriers and the large dispersal abilities of pelagic species like cetaceans have raised the questions of how populations and species can diverge and adapt to distinct ecological conditions in face of potentially large gene-flow, the so-called marine speciation paradox (Bierne et al. 2003). Contemporaneous hybridization among cetacean species has been widely documented in nature despite large phenotypic differences (Crossman et al. 2016). The historical prevalence of reticulated evolution, its evolutionary significance, and how it might have impacted the evolutionary history and diversification of the cetaceans have however remained elusive so far. Recent phylogenomic studies suggested that introgression has been prevalent in cetacean evolutionary history with instances reported among baleen whales (mysticetes) (Árnason et al. 2018) and among toothed whales (odontocetes), especially in the rapidly diversifying dolphins family of the Delphininae (Guo et al. 2021; Moura et al. 2020).

Analysing publicly available whole-genome data from nine cetacean species across three families of Delphinoidae – dolphins, porpoises, and monondontidae – using phylogenomics and demo-genetics approaches, Westbury and colleagues (2022) take a step further in documenting that evolution among these species has been far from a simple bifurcating tree. Instead, their study describes widespread occurrences of introgression among Delphinoidae, drawing a complex picture of reticulated evolutionary history. After describing major topology discordance in phylogenetic gene trees along the genome, the authors use a panel of approaches to disentangle introgression from incomplete lineage sorting (ILS), the two most common causes of tree topology discordances (Hibbins & Hahn 2022). Applying popular tests that separate introgression from ILS, such as the Patterson’s D (a.k.a. ABBA-BABA) test (Durand et al. 2011; Green et al. 2010), QuIBL (Edelman et al. 2019), and D-FOIL (Pease & Hahn 2015), the authors report that signals of introgression are present in the genomes of most (if not all) the cetacean species included in their study. However, this picture needs to be nuanced. Most introgression signals seem to echo old introgression events that occurred primarily among ancestors. This is suggested by the differential signals of topology discordance along the genome when considering sliding windows along the genome of varying sizes (50kb, 100kb, and 1Mb), and by patterns of excess derived allele sharing along branches of the species tree, as captured by the f-branch test (Malinsky et al. 2021; Malinsky et al. 2018). The authors further investigated the dynamic of cessation of gene flow (and/or ILS) between species using the F1 hybrid PSMC (or hPSMC) approach (Cahill et al. 2016). By estimating the cross-coalescent rates (CRR) between species pairs with time in light of previously estimated species divergence times (McGowen et al. 2020), the authors report that gene flow (and/or ILS) most likely has stopped by now among most species, but it may have lasted for more than half of the time since the species split from each other. According to the author, this result may reflect the slow process by which reproductive isolation would have evolved between cetacean lineages, and that species isolation was marked by significant introgression events.

Now, while the present study provides a good overview of how complex is the reticulated evolutionary history of the Delphinoidae, getting a complete picture will require overcoming a few important limitations. The first ones are methodological and related to the phylogenomic analyses. Given the sampling design with one diploid genome per species, the authors could not phase the data into the parental haplotypes, but instead relied on a majority consensus creating mosaic haploidized genomes representing a mixture between the two parental copies. Moreover, by using large genomic windows (≥50kb) that likely span multiple independent loci, phylogenetic analyses in windows encompassed distinct phylogenetic signals, potentially leading to bias and inaccuracy in the inferences. Thawornwattana et al (2018) previously showed that this “concatenation approach”  could significantly impact phylogenetic inferences. They proposed instead to use loci small enough to minimise the risk of intra-locus recombination and to consider them in blocks of non-recombining loci along the genome in order to conduct phylogenetic analysed, ideally under the multi-species coalescent (MSC) that can account for ILS (e.g. BPP; Flouri et al. 2018; Jiao et al. 2020; Yang 2015). Such an approach applied to the diversification of the Delphinidae may reveal substantial changes compared to the currently admitted species tree.

Inaccuracy in the species tree estimation may have a major impact on the introgression analyses conducted in this study since the species tree and branching order must be supplied in the introgression analyses to properly disentangle introgression from ILS. Here, the authors rely on the tree topology that was previously estimated in McGowen et al. (2020), which they also recovered using their consensus estimation from ASTRAL-III (Zhang et al. 2018). While the methodologies accounted to a certain extent for ILS, albeit with potential bias induced by the concatenation approach, they ignore the presumably large amount of introgression among species during the diversification process. Estimating species branching order while ignoring introgression can lead to major bias in the phylogenetic inference and can lead to incorrect topologies. Even if these MSC-based methods account for ILS, inferences can become very inaccurate or even break down as gene flow increases (see for ex. Jiao et al. 2020; Müller et al. in press; Solís-Lemus et al. 2016). Dedicated approaches have been developed to model explicitly introgression together with ILS to estimate phylogenetic networks (Blair & Ané 2020; Rabier et al. 2021) or in isolation-with-migration model (Müller et al. in press; Wang et al. 2020). Future studies revisiting the reticulated evolutionary history of the Delphinoidae with such approaches may not only precise the species branching order, but also deliver a finer view of the magnitude and prevalence of introgression during the evolutionary history of these species.

A final part of Westbury et al. (2022)'s study set out to test whether historical periods of low abundance could have facilitated hybridization among Delphinoidae species. During these periods of low abundance, species may encounter only a limited number of conspecifics and may consider individuals from other species as suitable mating partners, leading to hybridisation (Crossman et al. 2016; Edwards et al. 2011; Westbury et al. 2019). The authors tested this hypothesis by considering genome-wide genetic diversity (or heterozygosity) as a proxy of historical effective population size (Ne), itself as a proxy of the evolution of census size with time. They also try to link historical Ne variation (from PSMC, Li & Durbin 2011) with their estimated time to cessation of gene flow or ILS (from the CRR of hPSMC). However, no straightforward relationship was found between the genetic diversity and the propensity of species to hybridize, nor was there any clear link between Ne variation through time and the cessation of gene flow or ILS. Such a lack of relationship may not come as a surprise, since the determinants of genome-wide genetic diversity and its variation through evolutionary time-scale are far more diverse and complex than just a direct link with hybridization, introgression, or even with the census population size. In fact, genetic diversity results from the balance between all the evolutionary processes at play in the species' evolutionary history (see the review of Ellegren & Galtier 2016). Other important factors can strongly impact genetic diversity, including demography and structure, but also linked selection (Boitard et al. 2022; Buffalo 2021; Ellegren & Galtier 2016). 

All in all, Westbury and coll. (2022) present here an interesting study providing an additional step towards resolving and understanding the complex evolutionary history of the Delphinoidae, and shedding light on the importance of introgression during the diversification of these cetacean species. Prospective work improving upon the taxonomic sampling, with additional genomic data for each species, considered with dedicated approaches tailored at estimating species tree or network while accounting for ILS and introgression will be key for refining the picture depicted in this study. Down the road, altogether these studies will contribute to assessing the evolutionary significance of introgression on the diversification of Delphinoides, and more generally on the diversification of cetacean species, which still remain an open and exciting perspective. 

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Buffalo V (2021) Quantifying the relationship between genetic diversity and population size suggests natural selection cannot explain Lewontin's Paradox. e-Life 10, e67509. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.67509

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Degnan JH, Rosenberg NA (2009) Gene tree discordance, phylogenetic inference and the multispecies coalescent. Trends Ecol Evol 24, 332-340. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2009.01.009

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McGowen MR, Tsagkogeorga G, Alvarez-Carretero S, Dos Reis M, Struebig M, Deaville R, Jepson PD, Jarman S, Polanowski A, Morin PA, Rossiter SJ (2020) Phylogenomic Resolution of the Cetacean Tree of Life Using Target Sequence Capture. Syst Biol 69, 479-501. https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/syz068

Moura AE, Shreves K, Pilot M, Andrews KR, Moore DM, Kishida T, Möller L, Natoli A, Gaspari S, McGowen M, Chen I, Gray H, Gore M, Culloch RM, Kiani MS, Willson MS, Bulushi A, Collins T, Baldwin R, Willson A, Minton G, Ponnampalam L, Hoelzel AR (2020) Phylogenomics of the genus Tursiops and closely related Delphininae reveals extensive reticulation among lineages and provides inference about eco-evolutionary drivers. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 146,107047. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2020.106756

Müller NF, Ogilvie HA, Zhang C, Fontaine MC, Amaya-Romero JE, Drummond AJ, Stadler T (in press) Joint inference of species histories and gene flow. Syst Biol.

Pease JB, Hahn MW (2015) Detection and Polarization of Introgression in a Five-Taxon Phylogeny. Syst Biol 64, 651-662. https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/syv023

Rabier CE, Berry V, Stoltz M, Santos JD, Wang W, Glaszmann JC, Pardi F, Scornavacca C (2021) On the inference of complex phylogenetic networks by Markov Chain Monte-Carlo. PLoS Comput Biol 17, e1008380. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008380

Seehausen O (2004) Hybridization and adaptive radiation. Trends Ecol Evol 19, 198-207. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2004.01.003

Solís-Lemus C, Yang M, Ané C (2016) Inconsistency of Species Tree Methods under Gene Flow. Syst Biol 65, 843-851. https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/syw030

Thawornwattana Y, Dalquen D, Yang Z, Tamura K (2018) Coalescent Analysis of Phylogenomic Data Confidently Resolves the Species Relationships in the Anopheles gambiae Species Complex. Molecular Biology and Evolution 35, 2512-2527. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msy158

Wang K, Mathieson I, O’Connell J, Schiffels S (2020) Tracking human population structure through time from whole genome sequences. PLOS Genetics 16, e1008552. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1008552

Westbury MV, Cabrera AA, Rey-Iglesia A, Cahsan BD, Duchêne DA, Hartmann S, Lorenzen ED (2022) A genomic assessment of the marine-speciation paradox within the toothed whale superfamily Delphinoidea. bioRxiv, 2020.10.23.352286, ver. 7 peer-reviewed and recommended by Peer Community in Evolutionary Biology. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.23.352286

Westbury MV, Petersen B, Lorenzen ED (2019) Genomic analyses reveal an absence of contemporary introgressive admixture between fin whales and blue whales, despite known hybrids. PLoS ONE 14, e0222004. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0222004

Yang Z (2015) The BPP program for species tree estimation and species delimitation. Current Zoology 61, 854-865. https://doi.org/10.1093/czoolo/61.5.854

Zhang C, Rabiee M, Sayyari E, Mirarab S (2018) ASTRAL-III: polynomial time species tree reconstruction from partially resolved gene trees. BMC Bioinformatics 19, 153. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12859-018-2129-y

A genomic assessment of the marine-speciation paradox within the toothed whale superfamily DelphinoideaMichael V Westbury, Andrea A Cabrera, Alba Rey-Iglesia, Binia De Cahsan, David A. Duchêne, Stefanie Hartmann, Eline D Lorenzen<p>The importance of post-divergence gene flow in speciation has been documented across a range of taxa in recent years, and may have been especially widespread in highly mobile, wide-ranging marine species, such as cetaceans. Here, we studied ind...Evolutionary Dynamics, Hybridization / Introgression, Molecular Evolution, Phylogenetics / Phylogenomics, SpeciationMichael C. Fontaine2020-10-25 08:55:50 View
25 Feb 2021
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Alteration of gut microbiota with a broad-spectrum antibiotic does not impair maternal care in the European earwig

Assessing the role of host-symbiont interactions in maternal care behaviour

Recommended by ORCID_LOGO based on reviews by Nadia Aubin-Horth, Gabrielle Davidson and 1 anonymous reviewer

The role of microbial symbionts in governing social traits of their hosts is an exciting and developing research area. Just like symbionts influence host reproductive behaviour and can cause mating incompatibilities to promote symbiont transmission through host populations (Engelstadter and Hurst 2009; Correa and Ballard 2016; Johnson and Foster 2018) (see also discussion on conflict resolution in Johnsen and Foster 2018), microbial symbionts could enhance transmission by promoting the social behaviour of their hosts (Ezenwa et al. 2012; Lewin-Epstein et al. 2017; Gurevich et al. 2020). Here I apply the term ‘symbiosis’ in the broad sense, following De Bary 1879 as “the living together of two differently named organisms“ independent of effects on the organisms involved (De Bary 1879), i.e. the biological interaction between the host and its symbionts may include mutualism, parasitism and commensalism.
So far, we have relative few studies that explore the role of symbionts in promoting social behaviours such as parental care. Clearly, disentangling cause and effect when assessing the functional significance of symbiotic relationships in general is extremely challenging, and perhaps even more caution is needed when assessing the role of symbionts in the evolution of parental care, given the high fitness benefits to the offspring of receiving care. An interesting study on the symbiotic relationship between termites and their eukaryotic gut symbionts proposes a role of gut flagellates in the origin of subsocial behaviour (extended offspring care) in the termites through proctodeal trophallaxis (i.e. anus-to-mouth feeding), driven by mutualistic beneficial interactions (Nalepa 2020). Van Meyel et al. (2021) hypothesized a role of gut symbionts in promoting maternal care behaviour in the European earwig, and set out to test this idea in a carefully executed experimental study. They used a broad-spectrum antibiotic treatment to alter gut microbiota in mothers and examined its effect on maternal care provisioning. While the antibiotic treatment altered the gut microbiome, no effect on pre- or post-hatching maternal care was detected. The authors also investigated a broad range of physiological and reproductive traits measured over a major part of a female’s lifetime, and detected no effect of microbiome alteration on these traits. The study therefore does not provide evidence for a direct role of the gut microbiome in shaping offspring care in this population of European earwigs.
Within populations, earwigs show inter-individual variation in the expression of maternal care (Meunier et al. 2012; Ratz et al. 2016), and there is evidence that genetic and environmental factors contribute to this this variation (Meunier and Kolliker 2012; Kramer et al. 2017). The study by Van Meyel et al. (2021) is the first to analyse microbiome composition of the European earwig, and they study host-symbiont associations in a single population. A next step could be to explore among population variation in the gut microbiome, to achieve a better understanding on host-microbiome variation and dynamics in wild populations. Depending on the nature of host-symbiont associations across populations, new perspectives on their functional significance may arise (Hird 2017; Johnson and Foster 2018). It is therefore too early to conclusively confirm or reject the role of microbial symbionts in the expression of parental care in this system.

References

Correa, C. C., and Ballard, J. W. O. (2016). Wolbachia associations with insects: winning or losing against a master manipulator. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 3, 153. doi: https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2015.00153

De Bary, A. (1879). Die Erscheinung der Symbiose. Verlag von Karl J. Trubner, Strassburg.

Engelstädter, J., and Hurst, G. D. (2009). The ecology and evolution of microbes that manipulate host reproduction. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 40, 127-149. doi: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.110308.120206

Ezenwa, V. O., Gerardo, N. M., Inouye, D. W., Medina, M., and Xavier, J. B. (2012). Animal behavior and the microbiome. Science, 338(6104), 198-199. doi: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1227412

Gurevich, Y., Lewin-Epstein, O., and Hadany, L. (2020). The evolution of paternal care: a role for microbes?. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 375(1808), 20190599. doi: https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0599

Hird, S. M. (2017). Evolutionary biology needs wild microbiomes. Frontiers in microbiology, 8, 725. doi: https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2017.00725

Johnson, K. V. A., and Foster, K. R. (2018). Why does the microbiome affect behaviour?. Nature reviews microbiology, 16(10), 647-655. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-018-0014-3

Kramer et al. (2017). When earwig mothers do not care to share: parent–offspring competition and the evolution of family life. Functional Ecology, 31(11), 2098-2107. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.12915

Lewin-Epstein, O., Aharonov, R., and Hadany, L. (2017). Microbes can help explain the evolution of host altruism. Nature communications, 8(1), 1-7. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14040

Meunier, J., and Kölliker, M. (2012). Parental antagonism and parent–offspring co-adaptation interact to shape family life. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 279(1744), 3981-3988. doi: https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2012.1416

Meunier, J., Wong, J. W., Gómez, Y., Kuttler, S., Röllin, L., Stucki, D., and Kölliker, M. (2012). One clutch or two clutches? Fitness correlates of coexisting alternative female life-histories in the European earwig. Evolutionary Ecology, 26(3), 669-682. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-011-9510-x

Nalepa, C. A. (2020). Origin of mutualism between termites and flagellated gut protists: transition from horizontal to vertical transmission. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 8, 14. doi: https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2020.00014

Ratz, T., Kramer, J., Veuille, M., and Meunier, J. (2016). The population determines whether and how life-history traits vary between reproductive events in an insect with maternal care. Oecologia, 182(2), 443-452. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-016-3685-3

Van Meyel, S., Devers, S., Dupont, S., Dedeine, F. and Meunier, J. (2021) Alteration of gut microbiota with a broad-spectrum antibiotic does not impair maternal care in the European earwig. bioRxiv, 2020.10.08.331363. ver. 5 peer-reviewed and recommended by PCI Evol Biol. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.08.331363

Alteration of gut microbiota with a broad-spectrum antibiotic does not impair maternal care in the European earwigSophie Van Meyel, Séverine Devers, Simon Dupont, Franck Dedeine and Joël Meunier<p>The microbes residing within the gut of an animal host often increase their own fitness by modifying their host’s physiological, reproductive, and behavioural functions. Whereas recent studies suggest that they may also shape host sociality and...Behavior & Social Evolution, Evolutionary Ecology, Experimental Evolution, Life History, Species interactionsTrine Bilde2020-10-09 14:07:47 View
10 Jul 2019
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Population genomics supports clonal reproduction and multiple gains and losses of parasitic abilities in the most devastating nematode plant pest

The scandalous pest

Recommended by ORCID_LOGO based on reviews by 2 anonymous reviewers

Koutsovoulos et al. [1] have generated and analysed the first population genomic dataset in root-knot nematode Meloidogyne incognita. Why is this interesting? For two major reasons. First, M. incognita has been documented to be apomictic, i.e., to lack any form of sex. This is a trait of major evolutionary importance, with implications on species adaptive potential. The study of genome evolution in asexuals is fascinating and has the potential to inform on the forces governing the evolution of sex and recombination. Even small amounts of sex, however, are sufficient to restore most of the population genetic properties of true sexuals [2]. Because rare events of sex can remain undetected in the field, to confirm asexuality in M. incognita using genomic data is an important step. The second reason why M. incognita is of interest is that this nematode is one of the most harmful pests currently living on earth. M. incognita feeds on the roots of many cultivated plants, including tomato, bean, and cotton, and has been of major agricultural importance for decades. A number of races were defined based on host specificity. These have played a key role in attempts to control the dynamic of M. incognita populations via crop rotations. Races and management strategies so far lack any genetic basis, hence the second major interest of this study.
The authors newly sequenced the full genome of eleven strains from Brazil and added nine already available samples from Africa and North-America. They report that, in all likelihood, M. incognita is indeed a purely asexual species. This is supported by (i) the confirmation that the genome is in its major part haploid, and (ii) a spectacularly high level of linkage disequilibrium, which does not decline with genetic distance between loci at a 100kb scale. The absence of sex and recombination is associated in M. incognita with a remarkably low amount of genetic diversity - one order of magnitude less than in typical sexual nematodes - and an heavy load of deleterious mutations, as measured by the ratio of non-synonymous (=amino-acid changing) to synonymous (=amino-acid conservative) diversity in coding sequences. The other important result of this study is that the population substructure in M. incognita is in no way related to host races or geography. The tree genetic clusters that are identified include strains from several continents and feeding on a diversity of host plants.
The implications of this work are numerous. First, the results suggest that M. incognita is an ancient asexual. Asexuality, which was here demonstrated via linkage disequilibrium analysis, must be ancient enough for diploidy (or, in this case, maybe triploidy) to have been lost - i.e., formerly homologous chromosomes have accumulated enough mutations to be assembled as distinct entities. So we are not talking about a highly successful clone having recently spread the world - rather a long-term obligate parthenogen. Asexual organisms are deprived of the source of genetic variation offered by recombination, which is why asexuality is thought to be an evolutionary dead-end. Long-term asexuals are uncommon and even the most famous ones, bdelloid rotifers, are suspected to experience between-individual genetic transfers [3]. M. incognita is apparently a true 'evolutionary scandal', and as such deserves particular attention from molecular evolutionary geneticists.
The lack of any host race effect on the genetic diversity of M. incognita is another important finding. So-called 'races' have largely contributed to shape researchers' view of the structure of the species so far. This study demonstrates that a mental effort is now needed to forget about races, and consider host-specificity for what it is - a phenotypic trait. This result implies that many host shifts must have independently occurred in the three M. incognita genetic lineages, suggesting an arms race between plants and nematodes, which in the absence of sex and recombination must be entirely mutation-driven on the nematode side. Genes functionally involved in the arms race might therefore be expected to have experienced convergent evolution, if distinct M. incognita lineages have adopted the same solutions to overcome plant defenses. The present study paves the way for such a genome scan. The authors rightly discuss that the strong adaptive potential of M. incognita, at least in terms of host shift, despite no sex and tiny amounts of genetic diversity, is a paradox that would deserve to be further investigated.

References

[1] Koutsovoulos, G. D., Marques, E., Arguel, M. J., Duret, L., Machado, A. C. Z., Carneiro, R. M. D. G., Kozlowski, D. K., Bailly-Bechet, M., Castagnone-Sereno, P., Albuquerque, E. V., & Danchin, E. G. J. (2019). Population genomics supports clonal reproduction and multiple gains and losses of parasitic abilities in the most devastating nematode plant pest. bioRxiv, 362129, ver. 5, peer-reviewed and recommended by Peer Community in Evolutionary Biology. doi: 10.1101/362129
[2] Hartfield, M. (2016). Evolutionary genetic consequences of facultative sex and outcrossing. Journal of evolutionary biology, 29(1), 5-22. doi: 10.1111/jeb.12770
[3] Debortoli, N., Li, X., Eyres, I., Fontaneto, D., Hespeels, B., Tang, C. Q., Flot, J. F. & Van Doninck, K. (2016). Genetic exchange among bdelloid rotifers is more likely due to horizontal gene transfer than to meiotic sex. Current Biology, 26(6), 723-732. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2016.01.031

Population genomics supports clonal reproduction and multiple gains and losses of parasitic abilities in the most devastating nematode plant pestGeorgios D Koutsovoulos, Eder Marques, Marie-Jeanne Arguel, Laurent Duret, Andressa CZ Machado, Regina MDG Carneiro, Djampa K Kozlowski, Marc Bailly-Bechet, Philippe Castagnone-Sereno, Erika VS Albuquerque, Etienne GJ Danchin<p>The most devastating nematodes to worldwide agriculture are the root-knot nematodes with Meloidogyne incognita being the most widely distributed and damaging species. This parasitic and ecological success seem surprising given its supposed obli...Adaptation, Bioinformatics & Computational Biology, Evolutionary Ecology, Genome Evolution, Genotype-Phenotype, Molecular Evolution, Phylogenetics / Phylogenomics, Population Genetics / Genomics, Reproduction and SexNicolas Galtier2018-08-24 09:02:33 View