On the genetic architecture of an adaptive radiation

Feller, Anna Fiona (2021). On the genetic architecture of an adaptive radiation. (Dissertation, Institut für Ökologie und Evolution, Philosophisch-naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät)

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How biodiversity evolves is of central interest to evolutionary biology. Adaptive radiations
provide prime systems to investigate processes of biological diversification and speciation. The
Lake Victoria haplochromine cichlid adaptive radiation stands out due to the exceptional speed
with which a spectacular diversity of species have evolved within this lake. Several coinciding
factors were likely key to the emergence of this radiation including ecological opportunity, sexual
selection, and intrinsic genomic features. Furthermore, the radiation was seeded by a hybrid
lineage derived from ancient hybridisation between two divergent species, which fuelled the
radiation by providing large amounts of genetic variation.
In my thesis, I investigate the ‘genetic architecture’ (the distribution and effects of
genetic variants in the genome) that underpin traits or genomic features that may have played
key roles in the rapid diversification and in the evolution and maintenance of reproductive
barriers in the Lake Victoria cichlid adaptive radiation.
In Chapter 1, I compare the genetic architecture of male nuptial colour, a trait under
sexual selection, in a sympatric pair that exhibits some gene flow vs a non-sympatric pair. In the
sympatric pair, I find the presence of moderate to large effect loci and some evidence for
linkage/pleiotropy, which might provide a genetic architecture that is robust to gene flow. The
absence of such an architecture in the non-sympatric pair could explain why these species seem
to not be able to persist in sympatry.
In Chapter 2, I investigate the genetic architecture of a whole suite of traits that
distinguish representative species of two different trophic levels. Transition between trophic
levels have occurred multiple times and rapidly in this radiation. I find a distributed architecture
with little evidence for linkage/pleiotropy (but some moderate to large effect loci). This suggests
that at the stage where these transitions occurred, genome-wide LD had to build between
multiple unlinked genomic regions underpinning traits that had to change in a concerted fashion,
which would have required both divergent selection and reproductive isolation.
In Chapter 3, I report a novel sex determining chromosome in African cichlids, that acts
as XY in one and ZW in another lineage. This highlights the high evolvability of sex determination
in these radiations, which might also play a role in speciation.
Finally, Chapter 4 is the first empirical test of the hypothesis that postzygotic intrinsic
incompatibilities could be important in speciation from a hybrid swarm, in a process where they
become sorted between subpopulations of a hybrid swarm and contribute to reproductive
isolation between the emerging species. I screen whole genomes of 94 species of the Lake
Victoria radiation and several hybrid crosses for genotype ratio distortions. I find signatures that
could be consistent with postzygotic incompatibilities, and significant overlap of putative
incompatibility regions with regions of high differentiation between sympatric sister species.
I end with a general discussion of my findings and suggestions for future work.

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