Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

Multiple genetic changes underlie the evolution of long-tailed forest deer mice

Evan P. Kingsley, Krzysztof M. Kozak, Susanne P. Pfeifer, Dou-Shuan Yang, Hopi E. Hoekstra
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/041699
Evan P. Kingsley
1Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Krzysztof M. Kozak
2Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EJ, UK
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Susanne P. Pfeifer
3School of Life Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Dou-Shuan Yang
4Burke Museum and Department of Biology, Box 351800, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Hopi E. Hoekstra
1Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Supplementary material
  • Preview PDF
Loading

ABSTRACT

Understanding both the role of selection in driving phenotypic change and its underlying genetic basis remain major challenges in evolutionary biology. Here we focus on a classic system of local adaptation in the North American deer mouse, Peromyscus maniculatus, which occupies two main habitat types, prairie and forest. Using historical collections we demonstrate that forest-dwelling mice have longer tails than those from non-forested habitats, even when we account for individual and population relatedness. Based on genome-wide SNP capture data, we find that mice from forested habitats in the eastern and western parts of their range form separate clades, suggesting that increased tail length evolved independently from a short-tailed ancestor. Two major changes in skeletal morphology can give rise to longer tails—increased number and increased length of vertebrae—and we find that forest mice in the east and west have both more and longer caudal vertebrae, but not trunk vertebrae, than nearby prairie forms. Using a second-generation intercross between a prairie and forest pair, we show that the number and length of caudal vertebrae are not correlated in this recombinant population, suggesting that variation in these traits is controlled by separate genetic loci. Together, these results demonstrate convergent evolution of the long-tailed forest phenotype through multiple, distinct genetic mechanisms (controlling vertebral length and vertebral number), thus suggesting that these morphological changes—either independently or together—are adaptive.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted February 29, 2016.
Download PDF

Supplementary Material

Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Multiple genetic changes underlie the evolution of long-tailed forest deer mice
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Multiple genetic changes underlie the evolution of long-tailed forest deer mice
Evan P. Kingsley, Krzysztof M. Kozak, Susanne P. Pfeifer, Dou-Shuan Yang, Hopi E. Hoekstra
bioRxiv 041699; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/041699
Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Google logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Multiple genetic changes underlie the evolution of long-tailed forest deer mice
Evan P. Kingsley, Krzysztof M. Kozak, Susanne P. Pfeifer, Dou-Shuan Yang, Hopi E. Hoekstra
bioRxiv 041699; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/041699

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Evolutionary Biology
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (4095)
  • Biochemistry (8786)
  • Bioengineering (6493)
  • Bioinformatics (23386)
  • Biophysics (11766)
  • Cancer Biology (9167)
  • Cell Biology (13290)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (7422)
  • Ecology (11386)
  • Epidemiology (2066)
  • Evolutionary Biology (15119)
  • Genetics (10413)
  • Genomics (14024)
  • Immunology (9145)
  • Microbiology (22108)
  • Molecular Biology (8793)
  • Neuroscience (47445)
  • Paleontology (350)
  • Pathology (1423)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2483)
  • Physiology (3711)
  • Plant Biology (8063)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1433)
  • Synthetic Biology (2215)
  • Systems Biology (6021)
  • Zoology (1251)