skeletogenesis; Evolution; Development; Adaptation; Selection
Quilodrán Claudio S., Austerlitz Frédéric, Currat Mathias, Montoya-Burgos Juan I. (2018), Cryptic Biological Invasions: a General Model of Hybridization, in
Scientific Reports, 8(1), 2414-2414.
Jardim de Queiroz Luiz, Torrente-Vilara Gislene, Quilodran Claudio, Rodrigues da Costa Doria Carolina, Montoya-Burgos Juan I. (2017), Multifactorial genetic divergence processes drive the onset of speciation in an Amazonian fish, in
PLOS ONE, 12(12), e0189349-e0189349.
Rivera-Rivera Carlos J., Montoya-Burgos Juan I. (2017), Trunk dental tissue evolved independently from underlying dermal bony plates but is associated with surface bones in living odontode-bearing catfish, in
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 284(1865), 20171831-20171831.
Rivera-Rivera C. J. Montoya-Burgos J. I (2016), LS³: A method for improving phylogenomic inferences when evolutionary rates are heterogeneous among Taxa, in
Molecular Biology and Evolution, 33(6), 1625.
Covain R Fisch-Muller S Oliveira C Mol J H Montoya-Burgos J I Dray S (2016), Molecular phylogeny of the highly diversified catfish subfamily Loricariinae (Siluriformes, Loricariidae) reveals incongruences with morphological classification, in
Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution , (94), 492-517.
Quilodran C. Montoya-Burgos J. I. Currat M (2015), Modelling interspecific hybridization with genome exclusion to identify conservation actions: the case of native and invasive Pelophylax waterfrogs, in
Evolutionary Applications , 8(2), 199-210.
Quilodran C. Currat M. Montoya-Burgos J. I (2014), A General Model of Distant Hybridization Reveals the Conditions for Extinction in Atlantic Salmon and Brown Trout, in
PLoSONE, 9(7), e101736.
Weber A. A-T. Abi-Rached L. Galtier N. Bernard A. Montoya-Burgos J. I. and Chenuil A, Positive selection drives sperm motility in the brittle star species complex Ophioderma longicauda, in
Molecular Ecology, 1111.
SUMMARY A significant part of the functional diversity of life on earth is thought to have evolved through multiple bursts of adaptive speciation. The process of adaptive evolution is therefore central in the field of evolutionary biology and the understanding of the genetic mechanisms underlying the evolution of adaptive traits remains a challenging task. This proposal is organized into two sub-projects that are aimed at investigating the evolution of genes that are involved in adaptive responses and to understand the emergence of a key innovation that is thought to be responsible for the outstanding species diversification in a phenotypic-rich group of freshwater fishes, the Loricariidae catfishes.Loricariids display an exceptional external skeleton composed of dermal bony plates covered with teeth. In vertebrates, these skeletal structures derive from neural crest cells and are normally restricted to the head region. In the first sub-project of this proposal we will investigate the genetic changes that originated the ectopic development of head structures all over the body of loricariids. We will use in situ hybridization techniques to reveal changes in gene expression patterns that may explain the development of the exoskeleton of loricariids. Other non-loricariid catfishes and the zebrafish will be used as controls. Grafting experiments will also be assayed to decipher the role played by the microenvironment in neural crest cells specification. We hypothesize that this genetic change opened new niches for ancestral loricariids and permitted an extensive diversification, a situation that parallels acquisition of jaws during vertebrate's evolution. This hypothesis will be tested by analyzing pairs of sister clades, with and without exoskeleton. Also, multivariate analyses will permit to identify the variables that explain the best the changes in diversification rates.The second-subproject will consist in the characterization of genes involved in the evolution of adaptive traits and to establish correlations between the emergences of positively selected mutations and particular phenotypes. We will determine whether particular biological functions are enriched in positively selected genes and, therefore, have important roles in adaptive evolution. The role played by lineage-specific positively selected genes will also be assessed. To these aims, we propose a new combination of state-of-the-art techniques to obtain homologous DNA sequences of interest in a large panel of closely related species.The expected outcomes of this proposal will not only contribute significantly to the understanding of the processes underlying adaptive evolution, but will certainly offer new insights into the mechanisms of neural crest cells fate specification. We speculate that lorcariid catfishes will become an innovative and naturally occurring model system to study dermal bones and tooth development.