School of BioSciences, University of Melbourne, Melbourne 3010, Australia.
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70115, USA.
Proc Biol Sci. 2024 Jan 31;291(2015):20232292. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2023.2292. Epub 2024 Jan 24.
Predator-prey interactions have been suggested as drivers of diversity in different lineages, and the presence of anti-predator defences in some clades is linked to higher rates of diversification. Warning signals are some of the most widespread defences in the animal world, and there is evidence of higher diversification rates in aposematic lineages. The mechanisms behind such species richness, however, are still unclear. Here, we test whether lineages that use aposematism as anti-predator defence exhibit higher levels of genetic differentiation between populations, leading to increased opportunities for divergence. We collated from the literature more than 3000 pairwise genetic differentiation values across more than 700 populations from over 60 amphibian species. We find evidence that over short geographical distances, populations of species of aposematic lineages exhibit greater genetic divergence relative to species that are not aposematic. Our results support a scenario where the use of warning signals could restrict gene flow, and suggest that anti-predator defences could impact divergence between populations and potentially have effects at a macro-evolutionary scale.
捕食者-猎物相互作用被认为是不同谱系多样性的驱动因素，某些进化枝中存在的抗捕食防御与更高的多样化率有关。警告信号是动物界最广泛的防御方式之一，有证据表明警戒色进化枝具有更高的多样化率。然而，这种物种丰富度的背后机制尚不清楚。在这里，我们测试了是否将拟态作为抗捕食防御的进化枝表现出种群间更高水平的遗传分化，从而增加了分化的机会。我们从文献中收集了超过 3000 个来自 60 多种两栖动物的超过 700 个种群的成对遗传分化值。我们发现的证据表明，在短距离地理距离内，具有警戒色的物种的种群相对于没有警戒色的物种表现出更大的遗传差异。我们的结果支持这样一种情景，即警告信号的使用可能会限制基因流，并表明抗捕食防御可能会影响种群之间的分歧，并可能在宏观进化尺度上产生影响。
