Publication Date:
2016-04-23
Description:
Ecological character displacement is a process of morphological divergence that reduces competition for limited resources. We used genomic analysis to investigate the genetic basis of a documented character displacement event in Darwin's finches on Daphne Major in the Galapagos Islands: The medium ground finch diverged from its competitor, the large ground finch, during a severe drought. We discovered a genomic region containing the HMGA2 gene that varies systematically among Darwin's finch species with different beak sizes. Two haplotypes that diverged early in the radiation were involved in the character displacement event: Genotypes associated with large beak size were at a strong selective disadvantage in medium ground finches (selection coefficient s = 0.59). Thus, a major locus has apparently facilitated a rapid ecological diversification in the adaptive radiation of Darwin's finches.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Lamichhaney, Sangeet -- Han, Fan -- Berglund, Jonas -- Wang, Chao -- Almen, Markus Sallman -- Webster, Matthew T -- Grant, B Rosemary -- Grant, Peter R -- Andersson, Leif -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2016 Apr 22;352(6284):470-4. doi: 10.1126/science.aad8786.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Medical Biochemistry and Microbiology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden. ; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA. ; Department of Medical Biochemistry and Microbiology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden. Department of Animal Breeding and Genetics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden. Department of Veterinary Integrative Biosciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA. leif.andersson@imbim.uu.se.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27102486" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Beak/*anatomy & histology
;
Body Size/genetics
;
*Droughts
;
Ecuador
;
Female
;
Finches/*anatomy & histology/classification/*genetics
;
Genomics
;
Genotype
;
HMGA2 Protein/genetics
;
Haplotypes
;
Organ Size/genetics
;
Phylogeny
;
*Quantitative Trait Loci
;
*Selection, Genetic
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
