Document Type

Article

Publication Title

EvoDevo

Department

Mathematics

ISSN

2041-9139

Volume

6

Issue

1

DOI

10.1186/s13227-015-0026-2

Publication Date

11-10-2015

Abstract

Background: The evolution and development of sexual dimorphism illuminates a central question in biology: How do similar genomes produce different phenotypes? In an XX/XO system especially the state of a sexually dimorphic trait is determined by differences in gene expression, as there are no additional genetic loci in either sex. Here, we examine the XX/XO ostracod crustacean species Euphilomedes carcharodonta. This species exhibits radical sexual dimorphism of their lateral eyes, females have only a tiny simple lateral eye while males have elaborate ommatidial eyes. Results: We find that males express three of nine eye-development gene homologs at significantly higher levels during juvenile eye development, compared to females. We also find that most eye-development genes examined are pleiotropic, with high expression levels during embryonic development as well as during juvenile eye development. Later, in adults, we find that phototransduction genes are expressed at higher levels in males than in females, as we might expect when comparing ommatidial to simple eyes. Conclusions: We show here that expression changes of a handful of developmental genes may underlie the radical difference in a dimorphic character. This work gives an important point of comparison for studying eye evolution and development in the Pancrustacea.

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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