Gene expression correlates of social evolution in coral reef butterflyfishes.
Type
ArticleAuthors
Nowicki, Jessica
Pratchett, Morgan S
Walker, Stefan P W
Coker, Darren James

O'Connell, Lauren A

Date
2020-06-24Online Publication Date
2020-06-24Print Publication Date
2020-06-24Submitted Date
2020-02-04Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/663875
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Show full item recordAbstract
Animals display remarkable variation in social behaviour. However, outside of rodents, little is known about the neural mechanisms of social variation, and whether they are shared across species and sexes, limiting our understanding of how sociality evolves. Using coral reef butterflyfishes, we examined gene expression correlates of social variation (i.e. pair bonding versus solitary living) within and between species and sexes. In several brain regions, we quantified gene expression of receptors important for social variation in mammals: oxytocin (OTR), arginine vasopressin (V1aR), dopamine (D1R, D2R) and mu-opioid (MOR). We found that social variation across individuals of the oval butterflyfish, Chaetodon lunulatus, is linked to differences in OTR,V1aR, D1R, D2R and MOR gene expression within several forebrain regions in a sexually dimorphic manner. However, this contrasted with social variation among six species representing a single evolutionary transition from pair-bonded to solitary living. Here, OTR expression within the supracommissural part of the ventral telencephalon was higher in pair-bonded than solitary species, specifically in males. These results contribute to the emerging idea that nonapeptide, dopamine and opioid signalling is a central theme to the evolution of sociality across individuals, although the precise mechanism may be flexible across sexes and species.Citation
Nowicki, J. P., Pratchett, M. S., Walker, S. P. W., Coker, D. J., & O’Connell, L. A. (2020). Gene expression correlates of social evolution in coral reef butterflyfishes. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 287(1929), 20200239. doi:10.1098/rspb.2020.0239Sponsors
We thank Manuela Giammusso for field assistance; Makhail Matz, Eva Fischer and Rayna Harris for statistical guidance; Adam Dewan for generously sharing pre-published drafts of a Chaetodon brain atlas; and the O’Connell lab for comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. We acknowledge the fishes that were used to conduct the present study. We thank two anonymous reviewers for feedback that improved the manuscript during the review process.Publisher
The Royal SocietyPubMed ID
32576103Additional Links
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2020.0239https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2020.0239
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Is Supplemented By:- [Dataset]
Nowicki, J. P., Pratchett, M. S., Walker, S. P. W., Coker, D. J., & O'Connell, L. A. (2020). Supplementary material from "Gene expression correlates of social evolution in coral reef butterflyfishes". The Royal Society. https://doi.org/10.6084/M9.FIGSHARE.C.5014388. DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.c.5014388 Handle: 10754/665208
ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1098/rspb.2020.0239
Scopus Count
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