Ecological diversification of sea catfishes is accompanied by genome-wide signatures of positive selection
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Habitat transitions have shaped the evolutionary trajectory of many clades. Sea catfishes (Ariidae) have repeatedly undergone ecological transitions, including colonizing freshwaters from marine environments, leading to an adaptive radiation in Australia and New Guinea alongside non-radiating freshwater lineages elsewhere. Here, we generate and analyze one long-read reference genome and 66 short-read whole genome assemblies, in conjunction with genomic data for 54 additional species. We investigate how three major ecological transitions have shaped genomic variation among ariids over their ~ 50 million-year evolutionary history. Our results show that relatively younger freshwater lineages exhibit a higher incidence of positive selection than their more ancient marine counterparts. They also display a larger disparity in body shapes, a trend that correlates with a heightened occurrence of positive selection on genes associated with body size and elongation. Although positive selection in the Australia and New Guinea radiation does not stand out compared to non-radiating lineages overall, selection across the prolactin gene family during the marine-to-freshwater transition suggests that strong osmoregulatory adaptations may have facilitated their colonization and radiation. Our findings underscore the significant role of selection in shaping the genome and organismal traits in response to habitat shifts across macroevolutionary scales.
Source: Nature Communications
Authors: Melissa Rincon-Sandoval, Rishi De-Kayne, Stephen D. Shank, Stacy Pirro, Alfred Ko’ou, Linelle Abueg, Alan Tracey, Jackie Mountcastle, Brian O’Toole, Jennifer Balacco, Giulio Formenti, Erich D. Jarvis, Dahiana Arcila, Sergei L. Kosakovsky Pond, Aaron Davis, Devin D. Bloom, Ricardo Betancur-R
Language: English
Subfield: Molecular Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
SDG: Life below water
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $6,790
Funders: National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, George Washington University, University of Oklahoma, Drexel University, National Institutes of Health, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Supercomputing Center for Education and Research, University of Oklahoma, National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institute of General Medical Sciences, Division of Environmental Biology
Awards: G137283988, Collaborative Research: Investigating the factors shaping marine-derived freshwater fish radiations in tropical rivers of Australia and New Guinea, Collaborative Research: FishLife: genealogy and traits of living and fossil vertebrates that never left the water, G2505484859, Collaborative Research: Investigating the factors shaping marine-derived freshwater fish radiations in tropical rivers of Australia and New Guinea, G4645495834, G4797276660, G5107705165, G514369748, CAREER: Integrating Genomic, Paleoclimatic, and Morphological Approaches to Unravel the Evolutionary History of Fossil and Extant Marine Fishes Over Time, G7160333054, G7529004599, Title: Functional Annotation of Genomes via Phenotypic Convergence within Large Multi-species Alignments, Hypothesis Testing using Phylogenies for the 21st century
OpenAlex ID: W4404540650