Transition from Environmental to Partial Genetic Sex Determination in Daphnia through the Evolution of a Female-Determining Incipient W Chromosome.

ABSTRACT: Sex chromosomes can evolve during the evolution of genetic sex determination (GSD) from environmental sex determination (ESD). Despite theoretical attention, early mechanisms involved in the transition from ESD to GSD have yet to be studied in nature. No mixed ESD-GSD animal species have been reported, except for some species of Daphnia, small freshwater crustaceans in which sex is usually determined solely by the environment, but in which a dominant female sex-determining locus is present in some populations. This locus follows Mendelian single-locus inheritance, but has otherwise not been characterized genetically. We now show that the sex-determining genomic region maps to the same low-recombining peri-centromeric region of linkage group 3 (LG3) in three highly divergent populations of

SUBMITTER: Reisser CM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6279290 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature