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.
DOI
10.1126/sciadv.abq3713 Abstract
PubMed ID
36947619
Recommended Citation
Tunström, K., Woronik, A., Hanly, J. J., Rastas, P., Chichvarkhin, A., Warren, A. D., Kawahara, A. Y., Schoville, S. D., Ficarrotta, V., Porter, A. H., Watt, W. B., Martin, A., & Wheat, C. W. (2023). Evidence for a single, ancient origin of a genus-wide alternative life history strategy. Science advances, 9(12), eabq3713. Doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abq3713
Supplementary Text
sciadv.abq3713_tables_s2_to_s9.zip (27 kB)
Supplementary Tables
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Comments
Epublication March 22, 2023
Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY).