Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-18-2021

Publication Title

Ecology and Evolution

Volume

11

Issue

22

Pages

15484-15497

Publisher Name

John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Abstract

Appendages have been reduced or lost hundreds of times during vertebrate evolution. This phenotypic convergence may be underlain by shared or different molecular mechanisms in distantly related vertebrate clades. To investigate, we reviewed the developmental and evolutionary literature of appendage reduction and loss in more than a dozen vertebrate genera from fish to mammals. We found that appendage reduction and loss was nearly always driven by modified gene expression as opposed to changes in coding sequences. Moreover, expression of the same genes was repeatedly modified across vertebrate taxa. However, the specific mechanisms by which expression was modified were rarely shared. The multiple routes to appendage reduction and loss suggest that adaptive loss of function phenotypes might arise routinely through changes in expression of key developmental genes.

Comments

Author Posting © The Authors, 2021. This article is posted here by permission of John Wiley & Sons Ltd. for personal use and redistribution. This article was published open access in Ecology and Evolution, VOL.11, ISS.22, November 18, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.8226

Creative Commons License

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

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