Tabin Julius A, Chiasson Katherine A
Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.
iScience. 2024 Sep 13;27(10):110903. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.110903. eCollection 2024 Oct 18.
Few studies have explored eye (iris) color evolution beyond humans and domesticated animals. Felids exhibit significant eye color diversity, unlike their brown-eyed relatives, making them an ideal model to study the evolution of eye color in natural populations. Through machine learning analysis of public photographs, five felid eye colors were identified: brown, green, yellow, gray, and blue. The presence or absence of these colors was reconstructed on a phylogeny, as well as their specific quantitative shades. The ancestral felid population likely had brown-eyed and gray-eyed individuals, the latter color being pivotal for the diversification of eye color seen in modern felids. Additionally, yellow eyes are highly associated with and may be necessary for, the evolution of round pupils in felids. These findings enhance the understanding of eye color evolution, and the methods presented in this work are widely applicable and will facilitate future research into the phylogenetic reconstruction of color beyond irises.
很少有研究探讨人类和家养动物以外的动物（虹膜）眼睛颜色的进化。与棕色眼睛的近亲不同，猫科动物表现出显著的眼睛颜色多样性，这使它们成为研究自然种群中眼睛颜色进化的理想模型。通过对公开照片进行机器学习分析，确定了五种猫科动物的眼睛颜色：棕色、绿色、黄色、灰色和蓝色。这些颜色的有无以及它们具体的定量色调都在系统发育树上进行了重建。原始猫科动物种群可能既有棕色眼睛的个体，也有灰色眼睛的个体，后一种颜色对于现代猫科动物眼睛颜色的多样化至关重要。此外，黄色眼睛与猫科动物圆形瞳孔的进化高度相关，可能也是其进化所必需的。这些发现增进了我们对眼睛颜色进化的理解，并且本文所提出的方法具有广泛的适用性，将有助于未来对虹膜以外颜色的系统发育重建研究。
