Doucet Dawson, Friesen Nathan, Derksen Naomi, Mulder Megan, Ingram Stephen, Malagon Juan Nicolas
Canadian Mennonite University, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
MicroPubl Biol. 2023 Aug 14;2023. doi: 10.17912/micropub.biology.000884. eCollection 2023.
Evolutionary innovations refer to the emergence of new traits, functions, or behaviors in organisms and lineages over time. Although research has demonstrated that such innovations can arise gradually or through small steps (Chouard 2010), the mechanisms by which rapid morphological diversification takes place remain poorly understood (Bailey 2019). To explore this question, we used the evolution of sex combs, as a system (Ho 2018). We used this male-specific row of leg bristles, comprising sex combs as a system, because it displays spectacular morphological diversification in a short time (Kopp 2011). Homeotic mutations in the fruit fly, are those which create modifications in one part of a fly to resemble another region. Here we describe effects of some of these mutations which transform the fly sex comb morphology to closely resemble sex comb morphology in other species. These findings support previous research indicating that minor alterations to regulatory elements can play a significant role in explaining morphological evolution (Atallah 2004). Thus, our results suggest that rapid diversification may not require starting from scratch, but rather may require minor modifications to the sex comb ground plan, which may account for its rapid morphological evolution (Lee 2011).
进化创新是指生物体及其谱系中随着时间推移新性状、功能或行为的出现。尽管研究表明此类创新可能会逐渐出现或通过小步骤产生（乔阿尔德，2010年），但快速形态多样化发生的机制仍知之甚少（贝利，2019年）。为了探究这个问题，我们将性梳的进化作为一个系统来研究（何，2018年）。我们把这一排由性梳组成的雄性特有的腿部刚毛作为一个系统来使用，因为它在短时间内展现出了惊人的形态多样化（科普，2011年）。果蝇中的同源异型突变是指那些使果蝇身体一部分发生改变以类似于另一区域的突变。在这里，我们描述了其中一些突变的影响，这些突变将果蝇的性梳形态转变为与其他物种的性梳形态极为相似。这些发现支持了先前的研究，即调控元件的微小改变在解释形态进化中可能起着重要作用（阿塔拉，2004年）。因此，我们的结果表明，快速多样化可能不需要从零开始，而是可能需要对性梳基本结构进行微小修改，这可能解释了其快速的形态进化（李，2011年）。
