No evidence for strong cytonuclear conflict over sex allocation in a simultaneously hermaphroditic flatworm

BMC Evolutionary Biology

Research Article

Gudrun Viktorin¹  Nikolas Vellnow¹  Lukas Schärer²  Dita B. Vizoso² 

[1] University of Basel, Zoological Institute, Evolutionary Biology, Basel, Switzerland;University of Basel, Zoological Institute, Evolutionary Biology, Basel, Switzerland;University of Innsbruck, Institute of Zoology, Innsbruck, Austria;

关键词: Genomic conflict;    Cytonuclear conflict;    Sex allocation;    Cytoplasmic male sterility;    Animal;    Simultaneous hermaphrodite;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12862-017-0952-9

 received in 2017-01-14, accepted in 2017-04-10,  发布年份 2017

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundCytoplasmic sex allocation distorters, which arise from cytonuclear conflict over the optimal investment into male versus female reproductive function, are some of the best-researched examples for genomic conflict. Among hermaphrodites, many such distorters have been found in plants, while, to our knowledge, none have been clearly documented in animals.MethodsHere we provide a quantitative test for cytonuclear conflict over sex allocation in the simultaneously hermaphroditic flatworm Macrostomum lignano. We used a quantitative genetic breeding design, employing pair-wise crosses of 2 × 15 independent inbred lines, to partition the phenotypic variance in several traits (including sex allocation) into its nuclear and cytoplasmic components.ResultsAlthough the nuclear genetic background had a significant effect on all traits analyzed, we found significant cytoplasmic genetic variation only for ovary size, there explaining just 4.1% of the variance. A subsequent statistical power analysis showed that the experimental design had considerable power to detect cytonuclear interactions.ConclusionWe conclude that there were no strong effects of cytonuclear conflict in the studied populations, possibly because the usually compact mitochondrial genomes in animals have a lower evolvability than the large mitochondrial genomes in plants or because the sampled populations currently do not harbor variation at putative distorter and/or the restorer loci.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s). 2017