Pirani Renata M, Arias Carlos F, Curlis John David, Nicholson Daniel J, Stapley Jessica, McMillan W Owen, Cox Christian L, Logan Michael L
Department of Biology and Program in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology, University of Nevada Reno, Reno, NV, USA.
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama City, Panama.
Heredity (Edinb). 2025 Apr 30. doi: 10.1038/s41437-025-00763-z.
Organisms often use colorful morphological traits to communicate with members of their own or other species. While "colorful signaling" systems exemplify well-known examples of the evolution of phenotypic diversity, the genetic basis of most of these traits remains unknown. Male lizards of the genus Anolis possess a colorful throat fan, or "dewlap", that is flashed during social displays. These displays have been extensively studied in the context of their role in the adaptive radiation of the genus. In contrast, the genetic basis of the Anolis dewlap has received relatively little attention. Here, we studied the dewlap of the slender anole (Anolis apletophallus) which exhibits a dewlap polymorphism: males have either an entirely orange dewlap ("solid" morph) or a white dewlap with a basal orange spot ("bicolor" morph). To understand the inheritance of this polymorphism, we conducted 99 crosses between individuals from populations that were fixed for one morph (single/fixed/monomorphic) or contained both morphs (mixed/polymorphic). Next, we investigated the genetic architecture of this trait using a pooled population sequencing (Pool-seq) experiment. Our findings indicate that the slender anole dewlap polymorphism is best explained as an autosomal, single-locus, Mendelian trait with the solid morph allele dominant to the bicolor morph allele. Our outlier analysis of the Pool-seq data identified a region strongly associated with this trait and within this region we identified a promising candidate locus-the transcription factor single-minded 1 (SIM1)-that may underly the dewlap polymorphism.
生物体常常利用色彩斑斓的形态特征与同种或其他物种的成员进行交流。虽然“色彩信号”系统是表型多样性进化的著名例子，但这些特征大多的遗传基础仍不为人知。安乐蜥属的雄性蜥蜴拥有一个色彩鲜艳的喉部皮褶，即“喉扇”，在社交展示时会展开。这些展示在该属适应性辐射的背景下已得到广泛研究。相比之下，安乐蜥喉扇的遗传基础受到的关注相对较少。在这里，我们研究了细安乐蜥（Anolis apletophallus）的喉扇，它表现出喉扇多态性：雄性要么有一个完全橙色的喉扇（“纯色”形态），要么有一个基部带橙色斑点的白色喉扇（“双色”形态）。为了理解这种多态性的遗传方式，我们在固定为一种形态（单一/固定/单态）或包含两种形态（混合/多态）的种群个体之间进行了99次杂交。接下来，我们使用混合群体测序（Pool-seq）实验研究了这一特征的遗传结构。我们的研究结果表明，细安乐蜥喉扇多态性最好被解释为一种常染色体单基因孟德尔性状，纯色形态等位基因对双色形态等位基因呈显性。我们对Pool-seq数据的异常值分析确定了一个与该特征强烈相关的区域，在这个区域内我们确定了一个有前景的候选基因座——转录因子单 minded 1（SIM1），它可能是喉扇多态性的基础。
