Kang, J.H. The Genetic Basis Underpinning Sexually Selected Traits across Different Animal Lineages: Are There Genetic Mechanisms in Common? Animals2024, 14, 841.
Kang, J.H. The Genetic Basis Underpinning Sexually Selected Traits across Different Animal Lineages: Are There Genetic Mechanisms in Common? Animals 2024, 14, 841.
Kang, J.H. The Genetic Basis Underpinning Sexually Selected Traits across Different Animal Lineages: Are There Genetic Mechanisms in Common? Animals2024, 14, 841.
Kang, J.H. The Genetic Basis Underpinning Sexually Selected Traits across Different Animal Lineages: Are There Genetic Mechanisms in Common? Animals 2024, 14, 841.
Abstract
Sexual selection involving female choice or female preference (‘inter-sexual’ selection) or male-male competition (‘intra-sexual’ selection) is one of the key mechanisms for evolutionary diversification and speciation. In particular, sexual selection is recently suggested to be an important mode to drive the evolution of “novel” phenotype (i. e. “evolutionary novelty”). Despite extensive studies performed on sexually selected traits or male-specific ornaments (or weapon-like structures) with respect to their evolutionary origin and history and fitness benefits, relatively little is known about the molecular genetic mechanisms underlying their developmental process. However, with advances of genomic technologies (including whole transcriptome analysis using Next Generation Sequencing [NGS] techniques; RNA-Seq), progresses have been made to unveil the genetic background underpinning diverse sexually selected traits in different animal taxa. In the present review, we compile empirical data on the genes, genetic mechanisms or regulatory pathways underlying various sexually selected traits to explore whether the “common” genetic architectures shape the development and evolution of those traits across evolutionarily distant animal lineages. We show that the recruitment of pre-existing genetic network for a new purpose (i.e. gene network “co-option”) is rather widespread in the development and evolution of sexually selected traits, indicating that particular genes or gene-sets are repeatedly involved in different sexually selected traits. Information of genes or genetic mechanisms regulating the development of sexually selected traits would be an essential piece to complete a whole picture of the origin and evolution of sexually selected traits.
Keywords
co-option; evolutionary novelty; male ornament; male-specific trait; sexual selection
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
