Date of Award

6-20-2024

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Bioinformatics & Computational Biology

First Advisor

Heather Wheeler

Abstract

Despite sharing largely similar genomes, females and males of the same species exhibit morphological, physiological, and behavioral differences. Sex-role reversal stems from a unique case of sexual selection in which females compete for mates and males conduct the majority of parental duties. We examined the extent to which aggression and parenting may be mediated by different neurogenomic mechanisms by comparing females versus males in the northern jacana (Jacana spinosa), a sex-role reversed shorebird. We hypothesized that sex differences in neural transcriptomic profiles explain sexual dimorphism in behavior. We conducted RNA-Seq in two brain regions within the social behavior network: the nucleus taeniae and the preoptic area of the hypothalamus. Several hundred genes were differentially expressed between females and males in both brain regions. These comparative transcriptomic analyses suggest that behavioral differences between female and male northern jacanas are reflected in their neurogenomic profiles at the candidate gene and gene network levels.

Download

Share

COinS