There is no heterotic effect upon developmental stability in the ventral side of the skull within the house mouse hybrid zone

Canalization and developmental stability of the yellow-necked mouse (Apodemus flavicollis) mandible and cranium related to age and nematode parasitism

BACKGROUND

Mammalian mandible and cranium are well-established model systems for studying canalization and developmental stability (DS) as two elements of developmental homeostasis. Nematode infections are usually acquired in early life and increase in intensity with age, while canalization and DS of rodent skulls could vary through late postnatal ontogeny. We aimed to estimate magnitudes and describe patterns of mandibular and cranial canalization and DS related to age and parasite intensity (diversity) in adult yellow-necked mice (Apodemus flavicollis).

RESULTS

We found the absence of age-related changes in the levels of canalization for mandibular and cranial size and DS for mandibular size. However, individual measures of mandibular and cranial shape variance increased, while individual measures of mandibular shape fluctuating asymmetry (FA) decreased with age. We detected mandibular and cranial shape changes during postnatal ontogeny, but revealed no age-related dynamics of their covariance structure among and within individuals. Categories regarding parasitism differed in the level of canalization for cranial size and the level of DS for cranial shape. We observed differences in age-related dynamics of the level of canalization between non-parasitized and parasitized animals, as well as between yellow-necked mice parasitized by different number of nematode species. Likewise, individual measures of mandibular and cranial shape FA decreased with age for the mandible in the less parasitized category and increased for the cranium in the most parasitized category.

CONCLUSIONS

Our age-related results partly agree with previous findings. However, no rodent study so far has explored age-related changes in the magnitude of FA for mandibular size or mandibular and cranial FA covariance structure. This is the first study dealing with the nematode parasitism-related canalization and DS in rodents. We showed that nematode parasitism does not affect mandibular and cranial shape variation and covariance structure among and within individuals. However, parasite intensity (diversity) is related to ontogenetic dynamics of the levels of canalization and DS. Overall, additional studies on animals from natural populations are required before drawing some general conclusions.

Epistasis regulates the developmental stability of the mouse craniofacial shape

Fluctuating asymmetry is a classic concept linked to organismal development. It has traditionally been used as a measure of developmental instability, which is the inability of an organism to buffer environmental fluctuations during development. Developmental stability has a genetic component that influences the final phenotype of the organism and can lead to congenital disorders. According to alternative hypotheses, this genetic component might be either the result of additive genetic effects or a by-product of developmental gene networks. Here we present a genome-wide association study of the genetic architecture of fluctuating asymmetry of the skull shape in mice. Geometric morphometric methods were applied to quantify fluctuating asymmetry: we estimated fluctuating asymmetry as Mahalanobis distances to the mean asymmetry, correcting first for genetic directional asymmetry. We applied the marginal epistasis test to study epistasis among genomic regions. Results showed no evidence of additive effects but several interacting regions significantly associated with fluctuating asymmetry. Among the candidate genes overlapping these interacting regions we found an over-representation of genes involved in craniofacial development. A gene network is likely to be associated with skull developmental stability, and genes originally described as buffering genes (e.g., Hspa2) might occupy central positions within these networks, where regulatory elements may also play an important role. Our results constitute an important step in the exploration of the molecular roots of developmental stability and the first empirical evidence about its genetic architecture.

Craniofacial shape transition across the house mouse hybrid zone: implications for the genetic architecture and evolution of between-species differences

Craniofacial shape differences between taxa have often been linked to environmental adaptation, e.g., new food sources, or have been studied in the context of domestication. Evidence for the genetic basis of such phenotypic differences to date suggests that between-species as well as between-population variation has an oligogenic basis, i.e., few loci of large effect explain most of the variation. In mice, it has been shown that within-population craniofacial variation has a highly polygenic basis, but there are no data regarding the genetic basis of between-species differences in natural populations. Here, we address this question using a phenotype-focused approach. Using 3D geometric morphometrics, we phenotyped a panel of mice derived from a natural hybrid zone between Mus musculus domesticus and Mus mus musculus and quantify the transition of craniofacial shape along the hybridization gradient. We find a continuous shape transition along the hybridization gradient and unaltered developmental stability associated with hybridization. This suggests that the morphospace between the two subspecies is continuous despite reproductive isolation and strong barriers to gene flow. We show that quantitative changes in overall genome composition generate quantitative changes in craniofacial shape; this supports a highly polygenic basis for between-species craniofacial differences in the house mouse. We discuss our findings in the context of oligogenic versus polygenic models of the genetic architecture of morphological traits.

Mouth asymmetry in the textbook example of scale-eating cichlid fish is not a discrete dimorphism after all

Individuals of the scale-eating cichlid fish, Perissodus microlepis, from Lake Tanganyika tend to have remarkably asymmetric heads that are either left-bending or right-bending. The 'left' morph opens its mouth markedly towards the left and preferentially feeds on the scales from the right-hand side of its victim fish, and the 'right' morph bites scales from the victims' left-hand side. This striking dimorphism made these fish a textbook example of their astonishing degree of ecological specialization and as one of the few known incidences of negative frequency-dependent selection acting on an asymmetric morphological trait, where left and right forms are equally frequent within a species. We investigated the degree and the shape of the frequency distribution of head asymmetry in P. microlepis to test whether the variation conforms to a discrete dimorphism, as generally assumed. In both adult and juvenile fish, mouth asymmetry appeared to be continuously and unimodally distributed with no clear evidence for a discrete dimorphism. Mixture analyses did not reveal evidence of a discrete or even strong dimorphism. These results raise doubts about previous claims, as reported in textbooks, that head variation in P. microlepis represents a discrete dimorphism of left- and right-bending forms. Based on extensive field sampling that excluded ambiguous (i.e. symmetric or weakly asymmetric) individual adults, we found that left and right morphs occur in equal abundance in five populations. Moreover, mate pairing for 51 wild-caught pairs was random with regard to head laterality, calling into question reports that this laterality is maintained through disassortative mating.

Beyond bilateral symmetry: geometric morphometric methods for any type of symmetry

BACKGROUND

Studies of symmetric structures have made important contributions to evolutionary biology, for example, by using fluctuating asymmetry as a measure of developmental instability or for investigating the mechanisms of morphological integration. Most analyses of symmetry and asymmetry have focused on organisms or parts with bilateral symmetry. This is not the only type of symmetry in biological shapes, however, because a multitude of other types of symmetry exists in plants and animals. For instance, some organisms have two axes of reflection symmetry (biradial symmetry; e.g. many algae, corals and flowers) or rotational symmetry (e.g. sea urchins and many flowers). So far, there is no general method for the shape analysis of these types of symmetry.

RESULTS

We generalize the morphometric methods currently used for the shape analysis of bilaterally symmetric objects so that they can be used for analyzing any type of symmetry. Our framework uses a mathematical definition of symmetry based on the theory of symmetry groups. This approach can be used to divide shape variation into a component of symmetric variation among individuals and one or more components of asymmetry. We illustrate this approach with data from a colonial coral that has ambiguous symmetry and thus can be analyzed in multiple ways. Our results demonstrate that asymmetric variation predominates in this dataset and that its amount depends on the type of symmetry considered in the analysis.

CONCLUSIONS

The framework for analyzing symmetry and asymmetry is suitable for studying structures with any type of symmetry in two or three dimensions. Studies of complex symmetries are promising for many contexts in evolutionary biology, such as fluctuating asymmetry, because these structures can potentially provide more information than structures with bilateral symmetry.

MorphoJ: an integrated software package for geometric morphometrics

Increasingly, data on shape are analysed in combination with molecular genetic or ecological information, so that tools for geometric morphometric analysis are required. Morphometric studies most often use the arrangements of morphological landmarks as the data source and extract shape information from them by Procrustes superimposition. The MorphoJ software combines this approach with a wide range of methods for shape analysis in different biological contexts. The program offers an integrated and user-friendly environment for standard multivariate analyses such as principal components, discriminant analysis and multivariate regression as well as specialized applications including phylogenetics, quantitative genetics and analyses of modularity in shape data. MorphoJ is written in Java and versions for the Windows, Macintosh and Unix/Linux platforms are freely available from http://www.flywings.org.uk/MorphoJ_page.htm.