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Testing Convergent Evolution in Auditory Processing Genes between Echolocating Mammals and the Aye-Aye, a Percussive-Foraging Primate

Several taxonomically distinct mammalian groups—certain microbats and cetaceans (e.g., dolphins)—share both morphological adaptations related to echolocation behavior and strong signatures of convergent evolution at the amino acid level across seven genes related to auditory processing. Aye-ayes (Da...

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Autores principales: Bankoff, Richard J., Jerjos, Michael, Hohman, Baily, Lauterbur, M. Elise, Kistler, Logan, Perry, George H.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5553384/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28810710
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evx140
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author Bankoff, Richard J.
Jerjos, Michael
Hohman, Baily
Lauterbur, M. Elise
Kistler, Logan
Perry, George H.
author_facet Bankoff, Richard J.
Jerjos, Michael
Hohman, Baily
Lauterbur, M. Elise
Kistler, Logan
Perry, George H.
author_sort Bankoff, Richard J.
collection PubMed
description Several taxonomically distinct mammalian groups—certain microbats and cetaceans (e.g., dolphins)—share both morphological adaptations related to echolocation behavior and strong signatures of convergent evolution at the amino acid level across seven genes related to auditory processing. Aye-ayes (Daubentonia madagascariensis) are nocturnal lemurs with a specialized auditory processing system. Aye-ayes tap rapidly along the surfaces of trees, listening to reverberations to identify the mines of wood-boring insect larvae; this behavior has been hypothesized to functionally mimic echolocation. Here we investigated whether there are signals of convergence in auditory processing genes between aye-ayes and known mammalian echolocators. We developed a computational pipeline (Basic Exon Assembly Tool) that produces consensus sequences for regions of interest from shotgun genomic sequencing data for nonmodel organisms without requiring de novo genome assembly. We reconstructed complete coding region sequences for the seven convergent echolocating bat–dolphin genes for aye-ayes and another lemur. We compared sequences from these two lemurs in a phylogenetic framework with those of bat and dolphin echolocators and appropriate nonecholocating outgroups. Our analysis reaffirms the existence of amino acid convergence at these loci among echolocating bats and dolphins; some methods also detected signals of convergence between echolocating bats and both mice and elephants. However, we observed no significant signal of amino acid convergence between aye-ayes and echolocating bats and dolphins, suggesting that aye-aye tap-foraging auditory adaptations represent distinct evolutionary innovations. These results are also consistent with a developing consensus that convergent behavioral ecology does not reliably predict convergent molecular evolution.
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spelling pubmed-55533842017-08-29 Testing Convergent Evolution in Auditory Processing Genes between Echolocating Mammals and the Aye-Aye, a Percussive-Foraging Primate Bankoff, Richard J. Jerjos, Michael Hohman, Baily Lauterbur, M. Elise Kistler, Logan Perry, George H. Genome Biol Evol Research Article Several taxonomically distinct mammalian groups—certain microbats and cetaceans (e.g., dolphins)—share both morphological adaptations related to echolocation behavior and strong signatures of convergent evolution at the amino acid level across seven genes related to auditory processing. Aye-ayes (Daubentonia madagascariensis) are nocturnal lemurs with a specialized auditory processing system. Aye-ayes tap rapidly along the surfaces of trees, listening to reverberations to identify the mines of wood-boring insect larvae; this behavior has been hypothesized to functionally mimic echolocation. Here we investigated whether there are signals of convergence in auditory processing genes between aye-ayes and known mammalian echolocators. We developed a computational pipeline (Basic Exon Assembly Tool) that produces consensus sequences for regions of interest from shotgun genomic sequencing data for nonmodel organisms without requiring de novo genome assembly. We reconstructed complete coding region sequences for the seven convergent echolocating bat–dolphin genes for aye-ayes and another lemur. We compared sequences from these two lemurs in a phylogenetic framework with those of bat and dolphin echolocators and appropriate nonecholocating outgroups. Our analysis reaffirms the existence of amino acid convergence at these loci among echolocating bats and dolphins; some methods also detected signals of convergence between echolocating bats and both mice and elephants. However, we observed no significant signal of amino acid convergence between aye-ayes and echolocating bats and dolphins, suggesting that aye-aye tap-foraging auditory adaptations represent distinct evolutionary innovations. These results are also consistent with a developing consensus that convergent behavioral ecology does not reliably predict convergent molecular evolution. Oxford University Press 2017-07-26 /pmc/articles/PMC5553384/ /pubmed/28810710 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evx140 Text en © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com
spellingShingle Research Article
Bankoff, Richard J.
Jerjos, Michael
Hohman, Baily
Lauterbur, M. Elise
Kistler, Logan
Perry, George H.
Testing Convergent Evolution in Auditory Processing Genes between Echolocating Mammals and the Aye-Aye, a Percussive-Foraging Primate
title Testing Convergent Evolution in Auditory Processing Genes between Echolocating Mammals and the Aye-Aye, a Percussive-Foraging Primate
title_full Testing Convergent Evolution in Auditory Processing Genes between Echolocating Mammals and the Aye-Aye, a Percussive-Foraging Primate
title_fullStr Testing Convergent Evolution in Auditory Processing Genes between Echolocating Mammals and the Aye-Aye, a Percussive-Foraging Primate
title_full_unstemmed Testing Convergent Evolution in Auditory Processing Genes between Echolocating Mammals and the Aye-Aye, a Percussive-Foraging Primate
title_short Testing Convergent Evolution in Auditory Processing Genes between Echolocating Mammals and the Aye-Aye, a Percussive-Foraging Primate
title_sort testing convergent evolution in auditory processing genes between echolocating mammals and the aye-aye, a percussive-foraging primate
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5553384/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28810710
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evx140
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