Departamento de Biología Celular y Genética, Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima, Peru.
School of Health and Life Sciences, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Mol Biol Evol. 2022 Jun 2;39(6). doi: 10.1093/molbev/msac117.
Ecological differentiation among diverging species is an important component of the evolutionary process and can be investigated in rapid and recent radiations. Here, we use whole genome sequences of five species from the genus Leopardus, a recently diversified Neotropical lineage with species bearing distinctive morphological, ecological, and behavioral features, to investigate genome-wide diversity, comparative demographic history and signatures of positive selection. Our results show that divergent ecological strategies are reflected in genomic features, for example a generalist species shows historically larger effective population size and higher heterozygosity than habitat specialists. The demographic history of these cats seems to have been jointly driven by climate fluctuations and habitat specialization, with different ecological adaptations leading to distinct trajectories. Finally, a gene involved in vertebrate retinal neurogenesis (POU4F2) was found to be under positive selection in the margay, a cat with notoriously large eyes that are likely associated with its nocturnal and arboreal specializations.
物种分化的生态差异是进化过程的一个重要组成部分，可以在快速和近期的辐射中进行研究。在这里，我们使用五种豹属物种的全基因组序列，这些物种是新近多样化的新热带谱系，具有独特的形态、生态和行为特征，来研究全基因组多样性、比较人口历史和正选择的特征。我们的结果表明，不同的生态策略反映在基因组特征上，例如，一般来说，物种具有历史上更大的有效种群大小和更高的杂合度，而栖息地专家则相反。这些猫的种群历史似乎是由气候波动和栖息地专业化共同驱动的，不同的生态适应导致了不同的轨迹。最后，我们发现参与脊椎动物视网膜神经发生的基因（POU4F2）在长尾虎猫中受到正选择，长尾虎猫的眼睛非常大，这可能与其夜间和树栖的特殊习性有关。
