Beyond the phenotypic gambit: molecular behavioural ecology and the evolution of genetic architecture (original) (raw)
Related papers
Making scents of behavioural genetics: lessons from Drosophila
Genetics Research, 2010
SummaryThe expression of behaviours is influenced by many segregating genes. Behaviours are, therefore, complex traits. They have, however, unique characteristics that set them apart from physiological and morphological quantitative traits. First, behaviours are the ultimate expression of the nervous system. This means that understanding the genetic underpinnings of behaviours requires a neurobiological context, i.e. an understanding of the genes–brain–behaviour axis. In other words, how do ensembles of genes empower specific neural circuits to drive behaviours? Second, behaviours represent the interface between an organism and its environment. Thus, environmental effects are likely to make substantial contributions to determining behavioural outputs and genotype-by-environment interactions are expected to be prominent. It is important to differentiate between genes that contribute to the manifestation of the behavioural phenotype and genes that contribute to phenotypic variation in...
The Evolution of Interacting Phenotypes: Genetics and Evolution of Social Dominance
The American Naturalist, 2002
Although the argument over genetic influences on social dominance is contentious, genetic models of interacting phenotypes provide a theoretical framework for heritable effects on, and therefore evolution of, social behavior. Here we adapt the interacting phenotype model to show how social dominance can evolve. Our model makes a number of predictions: rapid evolution of behavior, strong correlated responses in associated traits (such as a badge of status), and, because context is important for social dominance, integrated evolution of both dominant and subordinate behavior reflecting direct and indirect genetic effects and social selection. We also describe the results of empirical work, artificial selection based on social status within a hierarchy in the cockroach Nauphoeta cinerea, that we used to test the predictions of our model. There was little change within selection lines in the expression of agonistic behavior, but by just generation 7 of selection, in comparisons between lines, high-line males consistently dominated low and control males, while low-line males were consistently subordinate to high-line and control males. There was a strong correlated response to selection in the pheromonal badge of status. Some correlated responses to selection differed among replicate lines, with the compound that makes males subordinate changed in one replicate, while the compound that confers dominance was altered in the other. Overall, our results are consistent with predictions from models of interacting phenotypes: social dominance is influenced by additive genetic variation, can evolve as a result of social selection, and evolution of social interactions appears to be rapid. Finally, different responses in the replicates allowed us to test very specific predictions regarding the role of the social pheromone in N. cinerea, highlighting the value of artificial selection experiments as a tool in evolutionary behavioral genetic studies.
Molecular Signatures of Natural Selection
Annual Review of Genetics, 2005
There is an increasing interest in detecting genes, or genomic re- gions, that have been targeted by natural selection. The interest stems from a basic desire to learn more about evolutionary pro- cesses in humans and other organisms, and from the realization that inferences regarding selection may provide important functional in- formation. This review provides a nonmathematical description of the
Evolutionary mechanisms in behaviour: An intraspecific genetic approach
Journal of Human Evolution, 1974
The study of the evolutionary mechanisms in behaviour and of the biological grounds of individual variability may be based on the comparative phylogenetic approach or on an intraspecific genetic analysis. The discontinuous behavioural progression evident across species is due to the assumption that the phylogenetic "scale" may be adopted in place of the phylogenetic trees and to the fact that today's existing species have evolved in parallel and may not be used to represent an evolutionary sequence. However, despite the existence of different motor and perceptual abilities the comparative approach has shown that many analogies exist between some basic brain mechanisms across species. The existence of outstanding individual differences within the same species must be regarded as a powerful potential tool since quantitative differences between the behaviours of different individuals belonging to the same species might later result in qualitatively different phenotypes. By using different strains and mutations of mice and different genetic approaches it has been possible to assess the mode of inheritance, to calculate estimates of heritability and of the number of segregating units for different behavioural traits ranging from avoidance to maze learning and activity. The existence of clear genetic correlations between some of these behavioural patterns has also allowed the identification of some single-gene mutants affecting these traits and the characterization of a gene responsible for a major effect on activity. This psychogenetic approach shows that there are behaviour differences which are the products of evolutionary adaptive processes and that the knowledge of the genetic systems that underlie these differences is a basic step for understanding the brain mechanisms in Man.
Behavioural syndromes shape evolutionary trajectories via conserved genetic architecture
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2020
Behaviours are often correlated within broader syndromes, creating the potential for evolution in one behaviour to drive evolutionary changes in other behaviours. Despite demonstrations that behavioural syndromes are common, this potential for evolutionary effects has not been demonstrated. Here we show that populations of field crickets ( Gryllus integer ) exhibit a genetically conserved behavioural syndrome structure, despite differences in average behaviours. We found that the distribution of genetic variation and genetic covariance among behavioural traits was consistent with genes and cellular mechanisms underpinning behavioural syndromes rather than correlated selection. Moreover, divergence among populations' average behaviours was constrained by the genetically conserved behavioural syndrome. Our results demonstrate that a conserved genetic architecture linking behaviours has shaped the evolutionary trajectories of populations in disparate environments—illustrating an im...
History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 2018
Although classical evolutionary theory, i.e., population genetics and the Modern Synthesis, was already implicitly 'gene-centred', the organism was, in practice, still generally regarded as the individual unit of which a population is composed. The gene-centred approach to evolution only reached a logical conclusion with the advent of the gene-selectionist or gene's eye view in the 1960s and 1970s. Whereas classical evolutionary theory can only work with (genotypically represented) fitness differences between individual organisms, gene-selectionism is capable of working with fitness differences among genes within the same organism and genome. Here, we explore the explanatory potential of 'intra-organismic' and 'intra-genomic' gene-selectionism, i.e., of a behavioural-ecological 'gene's eye view' on genetic, genomic and organismal evolution. First, we give a general outline of the framework and how it complements the-to some extent-still 'or-ganism-centred' approach of classical evolutionary theory. Secondly, we give a more in-depth assessment of its explanatory potential for biological evolution, i.e., for Darwin's 'common descent with modification' or, more specifically, for 'his-torical continuity or homology with modular evolutionary change' as it has been studied by evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) during the last few decades. In contrast with classical evolutionary theory, evo-devo focuses on 'within-organism' developmental processes. Given the capacity of gene-selection-ism to adopt an intra-organismal gene's eye view, we outline the relevance of the latter model for evo-devo. Overall, we aim for the conceptual integration between
BMC Evolutionary Biology, 2012
Background The origin and modification of novel traits are important aspects of biological diversification. Studies combining concepts and approaches of developmental genetics and evolutionary biology have uncovered many examples of the recruitment, or co-option, of genes conserved across lineages for the formation of novel, lineage-restricted traits. However, little is known about the evolutionary history of the recruitment of those genes, and of the relationship between them -for example, whether the co-option involves whole or parts of existing networks, or whether it occurs by redeployment of individual genes with de novo rewiring. We use a model novel trait, color pattern elements on butterfly wings called eyespots, to explore these questions. Eyespots have greatly diversified under natural and sexual selection, and their formation involves genetic circuitries shared across insects. Results We investigated the evolutionary history of the recruitment and co-recruitment of four c...
2013
SYNOPSIS. Developmental Evolution (DE) contributes to various research programs in biology, such as the assessment of homology and the determination of the genetic architecture underlying species differences. The most distinctive contribution offered by DE to evolutionary biology, however, is the elucidation of the role of developmental mechanisms in the origin of evolutionary innovations. To date, explanations of evolutionary innovations have remained beyond the reach of classical evolutionary genetics, because such explanations require detailed information on the function of genes and the emergent developmental dynamics of their interactions with other genetic factors. We argue that this area has the potential to become the core of DE’s disciplinary identity. The main challenge in developing a research program for DE along these lines, however, is to provide a methodological framework that accounts for the fact that developmental mechanisms continue to evolve after a character has...