Data from: The evolutionary genetics of acquisition and allocation in the wing dimorphic cricket, Gryllus firmus.

The evolutionary trajectories of trade-offs are ultimately governed by the evolution of the underlying physiological processes of the acquisition and subsequent allocation of resources. In this study, we focused directly on acquisition and allocation as traits and estimated their genetic architecture in the trade-off between flight capability and reproduction in the cricket, Gryllus firmus. To determine the evolutionary genetics of acquisition and allocation both within and between resource environments we performed a large-scale quantitative genetic breeding experiment in which families were split over several resource levels. Our findings were fourfold: 1) there was substantial genetic variance in acquisition and allocation; 2) contrary to the assumption of independence between acquisition and allocation, there was a significant genetic correlation between them; 3) the genetic covariance between acquisition and allocation was significantly different in the different food environments, 4) the trade-off, as measured by the genetic correlation between flight muscle mass and ovary mass, was only significant in the food restriction environments. However, when measured directly as the genetic correlation between reproductive allocation and flight allocation, we found a consistent strong negative genetic correlation, demonstrating that when allocation is measured independently of acquisition we find evidence for the trade-off.

权衡性状的演化轨迹，最终由资源获取及后续分配这一核心生理过程的演化所支配。本研究直接将资源获取与分配作为研究性状，针对蟋蟀（Gryllus firmus）飞行能力与繁殖能力之间的权衡关系，估算二者的遗传结构。为探明资源环境内部及跨资源环境下的资源获取与分配的演化遗传学特征，我们开展了大规模数量遗传育种实验，将各实验家系分配至多个资源水平梯度下培育。本研究得到四项核心结论：1）资源获取与分配均存在显著的遗传方差；2）与二者相互独立的经典假设相悖，资源获取与分配之间存在显著的遗传相关；3）不同食物环境下，资源获取与分配间的遗传协方差存在显著差异；4）以飞行肌质量与卵巢质量的遗传相关衡量的权衡关系，仅在食物限制环境中显著存在。然而，当直接以繁殖分配与飞行分配的遗传相关来衡量权衡时，我们发现了一致且强烈的负遗传相关，这表明：当脱离资源获取单独评估分配过程时，可观测到权衡关系的存在证据。