Projects per year
Abstract
The mechanisms underlying rapid macroevolution are controversial. One largely untested hypothesis that could inform this debate is that evolutionary reversals might release variation in vestigial traits, which then facilitates subsequent diversification. We evaluated this idea by testing key predictions about vestigial traits arising from sexual trait reversal in wild field crickets. In Hawaiian Teleogryllus oceanicus, the recent genetic loss of sound-producing and -amplifying structures on male wings eliminates their acoustic signals. Silence protects these “flatwing” males from an acoustically orienting parasitoid and appears to have evolved independently more than once. Here, we report that flatwing males show enhanced variation in vestigial resonator morphology under varied genetic backgrounds. Using laser Doppler vibrometry, we found that these vestigial sound-producing wing features resonate at highly variable acoustic frequencies well outside the normal range for this species. These results satisfy two important criteria for a mechanism driving rapid evolutionary diversification: Sexual signal loss was accompanied by a release of vestigial morphological variants, and these could facilitate the rapid evolution of novel signal values. Widespread secondary trait losses have been inferred from fossil and phylogenetic evidence across numerous taxa, and our results suggest that such reversals could play a role in shaping historical patterns of diversification.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 8941-8949 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America |
Volume | 116 |
Issue number | 18 |
Early online date | 16 Apr 2019 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 30 Apr 2019 |
Keywords
- Acoustic communication
- Diversification
- Evolutionary rate
- Sexual signal
- Trait loss
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Testing the role of trait reversal in evolutionary diversification using song loss in wild crickets'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 3 Finished
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Genomic Invasion: Genomic Invasion and the Role of Behaviour in Rapid Evolution.
Bailey, N. W. (PI)
1/10/14 → 4/12/20
Project: Standard
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Genomic Evolution in Real Time: Genomic evolution in real time: causes and consequences of an adaptive mutation in the wild
Bailey, N. W. (PI) & Ritchie, M. G. (CoI)
9/01/12 → 8/01/15
Project: Standard
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Sexual Selection of Field Crickets: Social Learning and Sexual selection in field crickets
Bailey, N. W. (PI)
1/04/10 → 31/03/13
Project: Fellowship
Profiles
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Nathan William Bailey
- School of Biology - Professor of Evolutionary Biology
- Centre for Biological Diversity
- Institute of Behavioural and Neural Sciences
- St Andrews Bioinformatics Unit
Person: Academic
Datasets
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Testing the role of trait reversal in evolutionary diversification using song loss in wild crickets (dataset)
Bailey, N. W. (Creator), Pascoal, S. (Contributor) & Montealegre-Z, F. (Contributor), University of St Andrews, 2019
DOI: 10.17630/a9885b35-fe5e-4800-a07c-df93c1350f6d
Dataset
File