Adaptive developmental plasticity: Compartmentalized responses to environmental cues and to corresponding internal signals provide phenotypic flexibility

BMC Biology

Research Article

Vicencio Oostra¹  Paul M Brakefield¹  Elvira Lafuente²  Ana Rita A Mateus³  Patrícia Beldade³  Manuel Marques-Pita⁴  Bas J Zwaan⁵ 

[1] Institute of Biology, Leiden University, Sylviusweg 72, 2333, BE Leiden, The Netherlands;Department of Zoology, Cambridge University, Downing Street, CB2 3EJ, Cambridge, UK;Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Rua da Quinta Grande 6, P-2780, Oeiras, Portugal;Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Rua da Quinta Grande 6, P-2780, Oeiras, Portugal;Institute of Biology, Leiden University, Sylviusweg 72, 2333, BE Leiden, The Netherlands;Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Rua da Quinta Grande 6, P-2780, Oeiras, Portugal;School of Informatics and Computing, Indiana University, 919 East Tenth Street, 47408, Bloomington, IN, USA;Laboratory of Genetics, Wageningen University, Droevendaalsesteeg 1, 6708, PB Wageningen, The Netherlands;

关键词: Bicyclus anynana;    Developmental recombination;    Ecdysone;    Environmental input;    Modularity;    Phenotypic flexibility;    Physiology;    Seasonal polyphenism;    Thermal plasticity;    Trait-specific sensitivities;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12915-014-0097-x

 received in 2014-09-05, accepted in 2014-11-04,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe environmental regulation of development can result in the production of distinct phenotypes from the same genotype and provide the means for organisms to cope with environmental heterogeneity. The effect of the environment on developmental outcomes is typically mediated by hormonal signals which convey information about external cues to the developing tissues. While such plasticity is a wide-spread property of development, not all developing tissues are equally plastic. To understand how organisms integrate environmental input into coherent adult phenotypes, we must know how different body parts respond, independently or in concert, to external cues and to the corresponding internal signals.ResultsWe quantified the effect of temperature and ecdysone hormone manipulations on post-growth tissue patterning in an experimental model of adaptive developmental plasticity, the butterfly Bicyclus anynana. Following a suite of traits evolving by natural or sexual selection, we found that different groups of cells within the same tissue have sensitivities and patterns of response that are surprisingly distinct for the external environmental cue and for the internal hormonal signal. All but those wing traits presumably involved in mate choice responded to developmental temperature and, of those, all but the wing traits not exposed to predators responded to hormone manipulations. On the other hand, while patterns of significant response to temperature contrasted traits on autonomously-developing wings, significant response to hormone manipulations contrasted neighboring groups of cells with distinct color fates. We also showed that the spatial compartmentalization of these responses cannot be explained by the spatial or temporal compartmentalization of the hormone receptor protein.ConclusionsOur results unravel the integration of different aspects of the adult phenotype into developmental and functional units which both reflect and impact evolutionary change. Importantly, our findings underscore the complexity of the interactions between environment and physiology in shaping the development of different body parts.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Mateus et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.