SCIENCE AT THE EDGE SEMINAR

QB/GEDD

Friday, April 20 at 11:30am

Room 1400 Biomedical and Physical Sciences Bldg.

Refreshments at 11:15

 

Ehab Abouheif

Department of Biology, McGill University

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

 

 

 

Parallel Evolution of a Gene Network in Sky Island Ant Populations is Contingent on Population History

 

 

The degree to which the repeatability of evolutionary outcomes is contingent upon historical events is a central question in evolutionary biology. Although this has been tested in microorganisms under controlled laboratory conditions, little is known about its dynamic in wild populations. We therefore studied independently evolving populations of the ant Monomorium emersoni on five “Sky Islands,” which are mountain ranges in Arizona that provide natural laboratories for testing such ideas. We combined ecological, morphological, and population genetics with gene expression analyses to understand how the gene network underlying wing development has evolved in parallel in the different sky island populations. We show that these populations are evolving independently in each sky island, where each exhibits frequency changes in an alternative phenotype, winged and wingless queens, along a replicated ecological gradient. We discovered that while some key genes in the network show repeated adaptive changes reflecting an ancestral potential for wing loss, other genes have evolved differences in their expression pattern reflecting the historical context of population contacts as well as more recent changes independent of population history. Therefore, evolutionary trajectories of developmental gene networks may often be contingent on their population history.

 

 

Helen Geiger, Administrative Assistant

Quantitative Biology Graduate Program and

Gene Expression in Development and Disease

Biochemistry

603 Wilson Road, Room 212

East Lansing, MI   48824

Email: [log in to unmask]

Phone:  517-432-9895

QB Website: http://www.qbi.msu.edu/

GEDD Website: http://www.gedd.msu.edu/