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Antunes MA, Grandela A, Santos MA, Santos M, Matos M, Simões P. Body size decline during thermal evolution is only detected at mild temperature. Proc Biol Sci 2024; 291:20241498. [PMID: 39353551 PMCID: PMC11444762 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2024.1498] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/19/2023] [Revised: 08/21/2024] [Accepted: 08/22/2024] [Indexed: 10/04/2024] Open
Abstract
Body size is a key morphological trait that affects physiology and metabolism, as well as other relevant traits such as fertility and mating success. Some evidence points to a trend of shrinking body size with increasing temperature, but this is far from unequivocal. Here, we assess the evolution of body size under a warming environment in experimentally evolved Drosophila subobscura populations from two distinct geographical origins, tested in both ancestral and warming environments. We observed a decrease in body size in the warming populations, but only in the lower-latitude populations and only when tested in the ancestral (control) environment. The absence of a body size response in the warming environment may be owing to a balance between forces promoting thermodynamic stability-leading to a tendency for body size to decrease-and selection for increased reproductive output-leading to an increase in body size. Our findings indicate that body size variation is complex, with genotype-by-environment interactions occurring. This may explain the lack of consistency across studies. This highlights that predictions of body size evolution under climate warming are not straightforward and emphasizes the need for considering intra- and inter-specific variation in future studies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marta A. Antunes
- CE3C – Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes & CHANGE – Global Change and Sustainability Institute, Lisboa, Portugal
- Departamento de Biologia Animal, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa1749-016 Lisboa, Portugal
| | - Afonso Grandela
- CE3C – Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes & CHANGE – Global Change and Sustainability Institute, Lisboa, Portugal
- Departamento de Biologia Animal, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa1749-016 Lisboa, Portugal
| | - Marta A. Santos
- CE3C – Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes & CHANGE – Global Change and Sustainability Institute, Lisboa, Portugal
- Departamento de Biologia Animal, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa1749-016 Lisboa, Portugal
| | - Mauro Santos
- CE3C – Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes & CHANGE – Global Change and Sustainability Institute, Lisboa, Portugal
- Departament de Genètica i de Microbiologia, Grup de Genòmica, Bioinformàtica i Biologia Evolutiva (GBBE), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona080193 Bellaterra, Spain
| | - Margarida Matos
- CE3C – Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes & CHANGE – Global Change and Sustainability Institute, Lisboa, Portugal
- Departamento de Biologia Animal, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa1749-016 Lisboa, Portugal
| | - Pedro Simões
- CE3C – Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes & CHANGE – Global Change and Sustainability Institute, Lisboa, Portugal
- Departamento de Biologia Animal, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa1749-016 Lisboa, Portugal
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Baur J, Giesen A, Rohner PT, Blanckenhorn WU, Schäfer MA. Exaggerated male forelegs are not more differentiated than wing morphology in two widespread sister species of black scavenger flies. J ZOOL SYST EVOL RES 2019. [DOI: 10.1111/jzs.12327] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/17/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Julian Baur
- Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies University of Zurich Zurich Switzerland
| | - Athene Giesen
- Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies University of Zurich Zurich Switzerland
| | - Patrick T. Rohner
- Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies University of Zurich Zurich Switzerland
| | - Wolf U. Blanckenhorn
- Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies University of Zurich Zurich Switzerland
| | - Martin A. Schäfer
- Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies University of Zurich Zurich Switzerland
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Rohner PT, Roy J, Schäfer MA, Blanckenhorn WU, Berger D. Does thermal plasticity align with local adaptation? An interspecific comparison of wing morphology in sepsid flies. J Evol Biol 2019; 32:463-475. [PMID: 30776168 DOI: 10.1111/jeb.13429] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/25/2018] [Revised: 02/04/2019] [Accepted: 02/06/2019] [Indexed: 12/13/2022]
Abstract
Although genetic and plastic responses are sometimes considered as unrelated processes, their phenotypic effects may often align because genetic adaptation is expected to mirror phenotypic plasticity if adaptive, but run counter to it when maladaptive. Because the magnitude and direction of this alignment has further consequences for both the tempo and mode of adaptation, they are relevant for predicting an organisms' reaction to environmental change. To better understand the interplay between phenotypic plasticity and genetic change in mediating adaptive phenotypic variation to climate variability, we here quantified genetic latitudinal variation and thermal plasticity in wing loading and wing shape in two closely related and widespread sepsid flies. Common garden rearing of 16 geographical populations reared across multiple temperatures revealed that wing loading decreases with latitude in both species. This pattern could be driven by selection for increased dispersal capacity in the cold. However, although allometry, sexual dimorphism, thermal plasticity and latitudinal differentiation in wing shape all show similar patterns in the two species, the relationship between the plastic and genetic responses differed between them. Although latitudinal differentiation (south to north) mirrored thermal plasticity (hot to cold) in Sepsis punctum, there was no relationship in Sepsis fulgens. While this suggests that thermal plasticity may have helped to mediate local adaptation in S. punctum, it also demonstrates that genetic wing shape differentiation and its relation to thermal plasticity may be complex and idiosyncratic, even among ecologically similar and closely related species. Hence, genetic responses can, but do not necessarily, align with phenotypic plasticity induced by changing environmental selection pressures.
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Affiliation(s)
- Patrick T Rohner
- Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Jeannine Roy
- Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Martin A Schäfer
- Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Wolf U Blanckenhorn
- Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
| | - David Berger
- Department of Ecology and Genetics, Evolutionary Biology Centre, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
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Schäfer MA, Berger D, Rohner PT, Kjaersgaard A, Bauerfeind SS, Guillaume F, Fox CW, Blanckenhorn WU. Geographic clines in wing morphology relate to colonization history in New World but not Old World populations of yellow dung flies. Evolution 2018; 72:1629-1644. [PMID: 29911337 DOI: 10.1111/evo.13517] [Citation(s) in RCA: 17] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/13/2016] [Accepted: 05/23/2018] [Indexed: 01/05/2023]
Abstract
Geographic clines offer insights about putative targets and agents of natural selection as well as tempo and mode of adaptation. However, demographic processes can lead to clines that are indistinguishable from adaptive divergence. Using the widespread yellow dung fly Scathophaga stercoraria (Diptera: Scathophagidae), we examine quantitative genetic differentiation (QST ) of wing shape across North America, Europe, and Japan, and compare this differentiation with that of ten microsatellites (FST ). Morphometric analyses of 28 populations reared at three temperatures revealed significant thermal plasticity, sexual dimorphism, and geographic differentiation in wing shape. In North America morphological differentiation followed the decline in microsatellite variability along the presumed route of recent colonization from the southeast to the northwest. Across Europe, where S. stercoraria presumably existed for much longer time and where no molecular pattern of isolation by distance was evident, clinal variation was less pronounced despite significant morphological differentiation (QST >FST ). Shape vector comparisons further indicate that thermal plasticity (hot-to-cold) does not mirror patterns of latitudinal divergence (south-to-north), as might have been expected under a scenario with temperature as the major agent of selection. Our findings illustrate the importance of detailed phylogeographic information when interpreting geographic clines of dispersal traits in an adaptive evolutionary framework.
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Affiliation(s)
- Martin A Schäfer
- Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland
| | - David Berger
- Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland
- Animal Ecology at Department of Ecology and Genetics, Evolutionary Biology Centre, Uppsala University, Norbyvägen 18d, SE-75236 Uppsala, Sweden
| | - Patrick T Rohner
- Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Anders Kjaersgaard
- Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Stephanie S Bauerfeind
- Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Frédéric Guillaume
- Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Charles W Fox
- Department of Entomology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40506
| | - Wolf U Blanckenhorn
- Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland
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Patterns of geographic variation of thermal adapted candidate genes in Drosophila subobscura sex chromosome arrangements. BMC Evol Biol 2018; 18:60. [PMID: 29699488 PMCID: PMC5921438 DOI: 10.1186/s12862-018-1178-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/26/2017] [Accepted: 04/11/2018] [Indexed: 11/10/2022] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND The role of chromosomal arrangements in adaptation is supported by the repeatable clinal variation in inversion frequencies across continents in colonizing species such as Drosophila subobscura. However, there is a lack of knowledge on the genetic variation in genes within inversions, possibly targets of climatic selection, across a geographic latitudinal gradient. In the present study we analysed four candidate loci for thermal adaptation, located close to the breakpoints, in two chromosomal arrangements of the sex (A) chromosome of Drosophila subobscura with different thermal preferences. Individual chromosomes with A2 (the inverted arrangement considered warm adapted) or AST (the standard ancestral arrangement considered cold adapted) were sequenced across four European localities at varying latitudes, up to ~ 2500 Kms apart. RESULTS Importantly, we found very low differentiation for each specific arrangement across populations as well as no clinal patterns of genomic variation. This suggests wide gene exchange along the cline. Differentiation between the sex chromosome arrangements was significant in the two more proximal regions relative to the AST orientation but not in the distal ones, independently of their location inside or outside the inversion. This can be possibly due to variation in the levels of gene flux and/or selection acting in these regions. CONCLUSIONS Gene flow appears to have homogenized the genetic content within-arrangement at a wide geographical scale, despite the expected diverse selective pressures in the specific natural environments of the different populations sampled. It is thus likely that the inversion frequency clines in this species are being maintained by local adaptation in face of gene flow. The differences between arrangements at non-coding regions might be associated with the previously observed differential gene expression in different thermal regimes. Higher resolution genomic scans for individual chromosomal arrangements performed over a large environmental gradient are needed to find the targets of selection and further elucidate the adaptive mechanisms maintaining chromosomal inversion polymorphisms.
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Predictable phenotypic, but not karyotypic, evolution of populations with contrasting initial history. Sci Rep 2017; 7:913. [PMID: 28424494 PMCID: PMC5430419 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-00968-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/13/2016] [Accepted: 03/21/2017] [Indexed: 02/07/2023] Open
Abstract
The relative impact of selection, chance and history will determine the predictability of evolution. There is a lack of empirical research on this subject, particularly in sexual organisms. Here we use experimental evolution to test the predictability of evolution. We analyse the real-time evolution of Drosophila subobscura populations derived from contrasting European latitudes placed in a novel laboratory environment. Each natural population was sampled twice within a three-year interval. We study evolutionary responses at both phenotypic (life-history, morphological and physiological traits) and karyotypic levels for around 30 generations of laboratory culture. Our results show (1) repeatable historical effects between years in the initial state, at both phenotypic and karyotypic levels; (2) predictable phenotypic evolution with general convergence except for body size; and (3) unpredictable karyotypic evolution. We conclude that the predictability of evolution is contingent on the trait and level of organization, highlighting the importance of studying multiple biological levels with respect to evolutionary patterns.
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Fragata I, Lopes-Cunha M, Bárbaro M, Kellen B, Lima M, Faria GS, Seabra SG, Santos M, Simões P, Matos M. Keeping your options open: Maintenance of thermal plasticity during adaptation to a stable environment. Evolution 2015; 70:195-206. [PMID: 26626438 DOI: 10.1111/evo.12828] [Citation(s) in RCA: 26] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/18/2015] [Accepted: 11/19/2015] [Indexed: 12/14/2022]
Abstract
Phenotypic plasticity may allow species to cope with environmental variation. The study of thermal plasticity and its evolution helps understanding how populations respond to variation in temperature. In the context of climate change, it is essential to realize the impact of historical differences in the ability of populations to exhibit a plastic response to thermal variation and how it evolves during colonization of new environments. We have analyzed the real-time evolution of thermal reaction norms of adult and juvenile traits in Drosophila subobscura populations from three locations of Europe in the laboratory. These populations were kept at a constant temperature of 18ºC, and were periodically assayed at three experimental temperatures (13ºC, 18ºC, and 23ºC). We found initial differentiation between populations in thermal plasticity as well as evolutionary convergence in the shape of reaction norms for some adult traits, but not for any of the juvenile traits. Contrary to theoretical expectations, an overall better performance of high latitude populations across temperatures in early generations was observed. Our study shows that the evolution of thermal plasticity is trait specific, and that a new stable environment did not limit the ability of populations to cope with environmental challenges.
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Affiliation(s)
- Inês Fragata
- cE3c-Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, 1749-016, Lisboa, Portugal.
| | - Miguel Lopes-Cunha
- cE3c-Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, 1749-016, Lisboa, Portugal
| | - Margarida Bárbaro
- cE3c-Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, 1749-016, Lisboa, Portugal
| | - Bárbara Kellen
- cE3c-Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, 1749-016, Lisboa, Portugal
| | - Margarida Lima
- cE3c-Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, 1749-016, Lisboa, Portugal
| | - Gonçalo S Faria
- cE3c-Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, 1749-016, Lisboa, Portugal
| | - Sofia G Seabra
- cE3c-Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, 1749-016, Lisboa, Portugal
| | - Mauro Santos
- Departament de Genètica i de Microbiologia, Grup de Genòmica, Bioinformàtica i Biologia Evolutiva (GGBE), Universitat Autonòma de Barcelona, 08193, Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain
| | - Pedro Simões
- cE3c-Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, 1749-016, Lisboa, Portugal
| | - Margarida Matos
- cE3c-Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, 1749-016, Lisboa, Portugal
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