Developmental bias in the evolution and plasticity of beetle horn shape

The degree to which developmental systems bias the phenotypic effects of environmental and genetic variation, and how these biases affect evolution, is subject to much debate. Here, we assess whether developmental variability in horn shape aligns with the phenotypic effects of plasticity and evolutionary divergence, yielding three salient results. First, we find that most pathways previously shown to regulate horn length also affect shape. Second, we find that the phenotypic effects of manipulating divergent developmental pathways are correlated with each other as well as multivariate fluctuating asymmetry – a measure of developmental variability. Third, these effects further aligned with thermal plasticity, population differences, and macroevolutionary divergence between sister taxa and more distantly related species. Collectively, our results support the hypothesis that changes in horn shape —whether brought about by environmentally plastic responses, functional manipulations, or evol...

发育系统在多大程度上会偏向环境与遗传变异的表型效应，以及这些偏向如何影响进化，这一问题存在诸多争议。在此，我们评估了角形状的发育变异性是否与可塑性的表型效应及进化分化一致，并得到三个显著结果。首先，我们发现此前被证明调控角长度的大多数通路同样会影响角形状。其次，我们发现操纵不同发育通路产生的表型效应不仅彼此相关，还与多元波动不对称性（multivariate fluctuating asymmetry，一种发育变异性的度量指标）相关。第三，这些效应进一步与热可塑性、种群差异以及姐妹类群和更远缘物种间的宏观进化分化一致。综上，我们的结果支持如下假说：角形状的变化——无论是由环境可塑性反应、功能操纵还是进化...