scholarly journals Cross‐species transcriptomics uncovers genes underlying genetic accommodation of developmental plasticity in spadefoot toads

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Christoph Liedtke ◽  
Ewan Harney ◽  
Ivan Gomez‐Mestre
Keyword(s):  
Developmental Plasticity ◽  
Genetic Accommodation ◽  
Spadefoot Toads

scholarly journals Caste-biased gene expression in a facultatively eusocial bee suggests a role for genetic accommodation in the evolution of eusociality

2017 ◽  
Vol 284 (1846) ◽  
pp. 20162228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beryl M. Jones ◽  
Callum J. Kingwell ◽  
William T. Wcislo ◽  
Gene E. Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Gene Expression ◽  
Developmental Plasticity ◽  
Ancestral State ◽  
Genetic Accommodation ◽  
Megalopta Genalis ◽  
Extant Species ◽  
Glycolysis Pathway ◽  
Evolutionary Context ◽  
Eusocial Bees ◽  
Selected Traits

Developmental plasticity may accelerate the evolution of phenotypic novelty through genetic accommodation, but studies of genetic accommodation often lack knowledge of the ancestral state to place selected traits in an evolutionary context. A promising approach for assessing genetic accommodation involves using a comparative framework to ask whether ancestral plasticity is related to the evolution of a particular trait. Bees are an excellent group for such comparisons because caste-based societies (eusociality) have evolved multiple times independently and extant species exhibit different modes of eusociality. We measured brain and abdominal gene expression in a facultatively eusocial bee, Megalopta genalis, and assessed whether plasticity in this species is functionally linked to eusocial traits in other bee lineages. Caste-biased abdominal genes in M. genalis overlapped significantly with caste-biased genes in obligately eusocial bees . Moreover, caste-biased genes in M. genalis overlapped significantly with genes shown to be rapidly evolving in multiple studies of 10 bee species, particularly for genes in the glycolysis pathway and other genes involved in metabolism. These results provide support for the idea that eusociality can evolve via genetic accommodation, with plasticity in facultatively eusocial species like M. genalis providing a substrate for selection during the evolution of caste in obligately eusocial lineages.

scholarly journals Evolution of, and via, Developmental Plasticity: Insights through the Study of Scaling Relationships

2019 ◽  
Vol 59 (5) ◽  
pp. 1346-1355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sofia Casasa ◽  
Armin P Moczek
Keyword(s):  
Developmental Plasticity ◽  
Potential Role ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Differential Growth ◽  
Genetic Accommodation ◽  
Developmental Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary Diversification ◽  
Scaling Relationships ◽  
Genetic Mechanisms

AbstractScaling relationships emerge from differential growth of body parts relative to each other. As such, scaling relationships are at least in part the product of developmental plasticity. While some of the developmental genetic mechanisms underlying scaling relationships are starting to be elucidated, how these mechanisms evolve and give rise to the enormous diversity of allometric scaling observed in nature is less understood. Furthermore, developmental plasticity has itself been proposed as a mechanism that facilitates adaptation and diversification, yet its role in the developmental evolution of scaling relationships remains largely unknown. In this review, we first explore how the mechanisms of scaling relationships have evolved. We primarily focus on insect development and review how pathway components and pathway interactions have evolved across taxa to regulate scaling relationships across diverse traits. We then discuss the potential role of developmental plasticity in the evolution of scaling relationships. Specifically, we address the potential role of allometric plasticity and cryptic genetic variation in allometry in facilitating divergence via genetic accommodation. Collectively, in this article, we aim to bring together two aspects of developmental plasticity: the mechanistic underpinnings of scaling relationships and their evolution, and the potential role that plasticity plays in the evolutionary diversification of scaling relationships.

scholarly journals Developmental plasticity mirrors differences among taxa in spadefoot toads linking plasticity and diversity

2006 ◽  
Vol 103 (50) ◽  
pp. 19021-19026 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. Gomez-Mestre ◽  
D. R. Buchholz
Keyword(s):  
Developmental Plasticity ◽  
Spadefoot Toads

scholarly journals Evolutionary reduction of developmental plasticity in desert spadefoot toads

2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (11) ◽  
pp. 2445-2455 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. S. KULKARNI ◽  
I. GOMEZ-MESTRE ◽  
C. L. MOSKALIK ◽  
B. L. STORZ ◽  
D. R. BUCHHOLZ
Keyword(s):  
Developmental Plasticity ◽  
Spadefoot Toads

scholarly journals The role of developmental plasticity in evolutionary innovation

2011 ◽  
Vol 278 (1719) ◽  
pp. 2705-2713 ◽  
Author(s):  
Armin P. Moczek ◽  
Sonia Sultan ◽  
Susan Foster ◽  
Cris Ledón-Rettig ◽  
Ian Dworkin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Degrees Of Freedom ◽  
Developmental Plasticity ◽  
Genetic Factors ◽  
Evolutionary Time ◽  
Dependent Development ◽  
Genetic Accommodation ◽  
Evolutionary Innovation ◽  
Novel Traits

Explaining the origins of novel traits is central to evolutionary biology. Longstanding theory suggests that developmental plasticity, the ability of an individual to modify its development in response to environmental conditions, might facilitate the evolution of novel traits. Yet whether and how such developmental flexibility promotes innovations that persist over evolutionary time remains unclear. Here, we examine three distinct ways by which developmental plasticity can promote evolutionary innovation. First, we show how the process of genetic accommodation provides a feasible and possibly common avenue by which environmentally induced phenotypes can become subject to heritable modification. Second, we posit that the developmental underpinnings of plasticity increase the degrees of freedom by which environmental and genetic factors influence ontogeny, thereby diversifying targets for evolutionary processes to act on and increasing opportunities for the construction of novel, functional and potentially adaptive phenotypes. Finally, we examine the developmental genetic architectures of environment-dependent trait expression, and highlight their specific implications for the evolutionary origin of novel traits. We critically review the empirical evidence supporting each of these processes, and propose future experiments and tests that would further illuminate the interplay between environmental factors, condition-dependent development, and the initiation and elaboration of novel phenotypes.

Cognitive gadgets and genetic accommodation

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Jablonka ◽  
Simona Ginsburg ◽  
Daniel Dor
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Flexibility ◽  
Metacognitive Strategies ◽  
Genetic Evolution ◽  
Genetic Accommodation

Abstract Heyes argues that human metacognitive strategies (cognitive gadgets) evolved through cultural rather than genetic evolution. Although we agree that increased plasticity is the hallmark of human metacognition, we suggest cognitive malleability required the genetic accommodation of gadget-specific processes that enhanced the overall cognitive flexibility of humans.

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