Parallelism and Epistasis in Skeletal Evolution Identified through Use of Phylogenomic Mapping Strategies.

ABSTRACT: The identification of genetic mechanisms underlying evolutionary change is critical to our understanding of natural diversity, but is presently limited by the lack of genetic and genomic resources for most species. Here, we present a new comparative genomic approach that can be applied to a broad taxonomic sampling of nonmodel species to investigate the genetic basis of evolutionary change. Using our analysis pipeline, we show that duplication and divergence of fgfr1a is correlated with the reduction of scales within fishes of the genus Phoxinellus. As a parallel genetic mechanism is observed in scale-reduction within independent lineages of cypriniforms, our finding exposes significant developmental constraint guiding morphological evolution. In addition, we identified fixed variation in

SUBMITTER: Daane JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5009992 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature