Document Type

Peer-Reviewed Article

Publication Date

2023

Abstract

Understanding the evolutionary origins and factors maintaining alternative life history strategies (ALHS) within species is a major goal of evolutionary research. While alternative alleles causing discrete ALHS are expected to purge or fix over time, one-third of the ~90 species of Colias butterflies are polymorphic for a female-limited ALHS called Alba. Whether Alba arose once, evolved in parallel, or has been exchanged among taxa is currently unknown. Using comparative genome-wide association study (GWAS) and population genomic analyses, we placed the genetic basis of Alba in time-calibrated phylogenomic framework, revealing that Alba evolved once near the base of the genus and has been subsequently maintained via introgression and balancing selection. CRISPR-Cas9 mutagenesis was then used to verify a putative cis-regulatory region of Alba, which we identified using phylogenetic foot printing. We hypothesize that this cis-regulatory region acts as a modular enhancer for the induction of the Alba ALHS, which has likely facilitated its long evolutionary persistence.

Comments

Epublication March 22, 2023

Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY).

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.abq3713 Abstract

PubMed ID

36947619

sciadv.abq3713_sm.pdf (14925 kB)
Supplementary Text

sciadv.abq3713_tables_s2_to_s9.zip (27 kB)
Supplementary Tables

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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