Evolutionary Biology

Phylogenomics reveals coincident divergence between giant host sea anemones and the clownfish adaptive radiation

1. Aurelien De Jode
2. Andrea M. Quattrini
3. Tommaso Chiodo
4. Marymegan Daly
5. Catherine S. McFadden
6. Michael L. Berumen
7. Christopher P. Meyer
8. Suzanne Mills
9. Ricardo Beldade
10. Aaron Bartholomew
11. Anna Scott
12. James D Reimer
13. Kensuke Yanagi
14. Takuma Fuji
15. Estefanía Rodríguez
16. Benjamin M. Titus

Reviewed by Arcadia Science

Positive selection and relaxed purifying selection contribute to rapid evolution of male-biased genes in a dioecious flowering plant

1. Lei Zhao
2. Wei Zhou
3. Jun He
4. De-Zhu Li
5. Hong-Tao Li

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This valuable paper examines gene expression differences between male and female individuals over the course of flower development in the dioecious angiosperm Trichosantes pilosa. Male-biased genes evolve faster than female-biased and unbiased genes, which is frequently observed in animals, but this is the first report of such a pattern in plants. In spite of the limited sample size, the evidence is mostly solid and the methods appropriate for a non-model organism. The resources produced will be used by researchers working in the Cucurbitaceae, and the results obtained advance our understanding of the mechanisms of plant sexual reproduction and its evolutionary implications: as such they will broadly appeal to evolutionary biologists and plant biologists.

Reviewed by eLife

Analyses of allele age and fitness impact reveal human beneficial alleles to be older than neutral controls

1. Alyssa M. Pivirotto
2. Alexander Platt
3. Ravi Patel
4. Sudhir Kumar
5. Jody Hey

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  Drawing on a human population genomic data set, this valuable study seeks to show that potentially advantageous alleles are on average older than neutral alleles, invoking the action of balancing selection as the underlying explanation. Currently it is unfortunately unclear how robust the estimates of allele ages are, and the evidence for the authors' proposal is therefore at this stage incomplete. If confirmed, the conclusions would be of interest to population genomicists, especially those studying humans.

Reviewed by eLife

Sperm production and allocation in response to risk of sperm competition in the black soldier fly Hermetia illucens

1. Frédéric Manas
2. Carole Labrousse
3. Christophe Bressac

Reviewed by Peer Community in Evolutionary Biology

Natural variation in the Caenorhabditis elegans egg-laying circuit modulates an intergenerational fitness trade-off

1. Laure Mignerot
2. Clotilde Gimond
3. Lucie Bolelli
4. Charlotte Bouleau
5. Asma Sandjak
6. Thomas Boulin
7. Christian Braendle

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important work provides a thorough and detailed analysis of natural variation in C. elegans egg-laying behavior. The authors present convincing evidence to support their hypothesis that variations in egg-laying behavior are influenced by trade-offs between maternal and offspring fitness. This study establishes a framework for elucidating the molecular mechanisms underlying this paradigm of behavioral evolution.

Reviewed by eLife

Antigenic strain diversity predicts different biogeographic patterns of maintenance and decline of antimalarial drug resistance

1. Qixin He
2. John K Chaillet
3. Frédéric Labbé

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  The study is an important advancement to the consideration of antimalarial drug resistance: the authors make use of both modelling results and supporting empirical evidence to demonstrate the role of malaria strain diversity in explaining biogeographic patterns of drug resistance. The theoretical methods and the corresponding results are compelling, with the novel model presented moving beyond existing models to incorporate malaria strain diversity and antigen-specific immunity. This work is likely to be interesting to malaria researchers and others working with antigenically diverse infectious diseases.

Reviewed by eLife

Cell-type-specific cis-regulatory divergence in gene expression and chromatin accessibility revealed by human-chimpanzee hybrid cells

1. Ban Wang
2. Alexander L Starr
3. Hunter B Fraser

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This is an important study that leverages a human-chimpanzee tetraploid iPSC model to test whether cis-regulatory divergence between species tends to be cell type-specific. The evidence supporting the study's primary conclusions together provide convincing evidence for enrichment of species differences in gene regulation in cell type-specific genes and regulatory elements, motivating future work with larger sample sizes of cell lines. This work will be of broad interest in evolutionary and functional genomics.

Reviewed by eLife

Taste shaped the use of botanical drugs

1. Marco Leonti
2. Joanna Baker
3. Peter Staub
4. Laura Casu
5. Julie Hawkins

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This valuable study links the "taste" of botanicals to their application as medicines used by the ancient Greco-Roman society. The authors used phylogenetic linear mixed models in a Bayesian framework to test the relationships between taste qualities, intensities, complexities, and therapeutic use. The evidence supporting the conclusions is solid, although there is a minor weakness concerning the somewhat inconsistent method of botanical preparation and presentation to the taster panelists; subjective bias and robustness of the participants' responses might have been overlooked. The study may be of broad interest to pharmacologists and scientists working on drug discovery, particularly those interested in natural products.

Reviewed by eLife

Genetic sex determination in three closely related hydrothermal vent gastropods, including one species with intersex individuals

1. J Castel
2. F Pradillon
3. V Cueff
4. G Leger
5. C Daguin-Thiébaut
6. S Ruault
7. J Mary
8. S Hourdez
9. D Jollivet
10. T Broquet

Reviewed by Peer Community in Evolutionary Biology

Evolutionary dynamics in non-Markovian models of microbial populations

1. Farshid Jafarpour
2. Ethan Levien
3. Ariel Amir

Reviewed by PREreview