Discrete genetic modules underlie divergent reproductive strategies in three-spined stickleback.

ABSTRACT: A central challenge in biology is to understand how complex behaviors evolve. Given their importance to fitness, complex behavioral traits often evolve as an integrated package, but it is unclear whether suites of traits evolve through a few pleiotropic genetic changes, each affecting many behaviors, or by accumulating several changes that, when combined, give rise to an entire package of correlated traits. Typically, three-spined stickleback exhibit paternal care, a behavior that characterizes the entire Gasterosteidae family. However, an unusual "white" three-spined stickleback ecotype exhibits a suite of traits associated with the evolutionary loss of paternal care. In the white ecotype, males disperse embryos from their nests rather than care for them, build loose nests, exhibit

SUBMITTER: Behrens C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12045342 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature