Developmental decoupling of alternative phenotypes: insights from the transcriptomes of horn-polyphenic beetles.

ABSTRACT: Developmental mechanisms play an important role in determining the costs, limits, and evolutionary consequences of phenotypic plasticity. One issue central to these claims is the hypothesis of developmental decoupling, where alternate morphs result from evolutionarily independent developmental pathways. We address this assumption through a microarray study that tests whether differences in gene expression between alternate morphs are as divergent as those between sexes, a classic example of developmental decoupling. We then examine whether genes with morph-biased expression are less conserved than genes with shared expression between morphs, as predicted if developmental decoupling relaxes pleiotropic constraints on divergence. We focus on the developing horns and brains of two species of

SUBMITTER: Snell-Rood EC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3010270 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature