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Abstract Detail



Symbioses: Plant, Animal, and Microbe Interactions

Edger, Pat [1], Pires, J. Chris [2].

Ehrlich and Raven revisited 50 years later: The butterfly-plant arms-race escalated by local and global duplications.

Fifty years ago, Ehrlich and Raven (1964) used the chemically mediated interactions between butterflies of the subfamily Pierinae (Pieridae, Lepidoptera) and their angiosperm host-plants in the Order Brassicales as one of the primary examples of diffuse coevolution. Unlike many of the coevolutionary examples studied in nature, genetic insights into these chemical interactions exist. However, the genetic basis of key innovations facilitating these plant-herbivore interactions is poorly understood, and the tempo and mode of their evolution is unstudied on a genomic scale. Here we test for, and present evidence of, escalation on a genomic scale for both sides of an ancient coevolutionary interaction between plants and butterflies. While gradual changes in trait complexity appear to be facilitated by allelic turnover and local gene duplication dynamics, the mechanisms underlying key innovations are related to larger scale gene and genome duplication events. Furthermore, we show that the origins of these traits (e.g. chemical defenses and molecular counter adaptations) are clearly associated with shifts in speciation on both sides of the arms-race over deep evolutionary time. These findings provide an important connection in macroevolution between one of the oldest insights into the origin of diversity on Earth, coevolution, with one of the most recent discoveries of our time, the significant role of gene and genome duplications as a substrate for novel traits and phenotypic variation.


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1 - University of California, Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, Berkeley, CA, 94794, USA
2 - University Of Missouri, 371 Bond Life Sciences Center, 1201 Rollins Street, Columbia, MO, 65211-7310, USA

Keywords:
coevolution
polyploidy
phylogenomics
genomics
systems biology
Brassicales
herbivory.

Presentation Type: Oral Paper:Papers for Topics
Session: 9
Location: Cottonwoods North/Boise Centre
Date: Monday, July 28th, 2014
Time: 10:15 AM
Number: 9001
Abstract ID:141
Candidate for Awards:None


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