Back

Radula diversification promotes ecomorph divergence in an adaptive radiation of freshwater snails

Hilgers, L.; Hartmann, S.; Pfaender, J.; Lentge-Maass, N.; von Rintelen, T.; Hofreiter, M.

2020-01-17 evolutionary biology
10.1101/2020.01.17.910034 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Adaptive diversification of complex traits plays a pivotal role for the evolution of organismal diversity. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms remain largely elusive. In the freshwater snail genus Tylomelania, adaptive radiations were likely promoted by trophic specialization via diversification of their key foraging organ, the radula. To investigate the molecular basis of radula diversification and its contribution to lineage divergence, we use pooled tissue-specific transcriptomes of two sympatric Tylomelania sarasinorum ecomorphs. We show that divergence in both gene expression and coding sequences is stronger between radula transcriptomes compared to mantle and foot transcriptomes. These findings support the hypothesis that diversifying selection on the radula is driving speciation in Tylomelania radiations. We also identify several candidate genes for radula divergence. Putative homologs of some candidates (hh, arx, gbb) also contributed to trophic specialization in cichlids and Darwins finches, indicating that some molecular pathways may be especially prone to adaptive diversification.

Matching journals

The top 5 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.