Evolutionary Biology

Individual differences in developmental trajectory leave a male polyphenic signature in bulb mite populations

1. Jacques A. Deere
2. Isabel M. Smallegange

Reviewed by Peer Community in Evolutionary Biology

Measures of genetic diversification in somatic tissues at bulk and single-cell resolution

1. Marius E Moeller
2. Nathaniel V Mon Père
3. Benjamin Werner
4. Weini Huang

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  In this paper, the authors introduce fundamental work on mathematical methods for inferring evolutionary parameters of interest from RNA data in healthy tissue and during hematopoiesis. By combining single cell and bulk sequencing analyses, the authors use a stochastic process to inform different aspects of genetic heterogeneity; the strength of evidence in support of the authors' claim is exceptional. The work will be of broad interest to cell biologists and theoretical biologists.

Reviewed by eLife

Comprehensive analysis of gene regulatory dynamics, fitness landscape, and population evolution during sexual reproduction

1. Kenji Okubo
2. Kunihiko Kaneko

Reviewed by PREreview

Efficient estimation for large-scale linkage disequilibrium patterns of the human genome

1. Xin Huang
2. Tian-Neng Zhu
3. Ying-Chao Liu
4. Guo-An Qi
5. Jian-Nan Zhang
6. Guo-Bo Chen

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study presents a valuable new approach for efficient computation of statistics on correlations between genetic variants (linkage disequilibrium, or LD), which the authors apply to quantify the extent of LD across chromosomes. The method appears solid, although the presentation of equations needs clarification and improvement. The authors document that cross-chromosome LD can be substantial, which has implications for geneticists who are interested in population structure and its impact on genetic association studies.

Reviewed by eLife

Repeatability of adaptation in sunflowers reveals that genomic regions harbouring inversions also drive adaptation in species lacking an inversion

1. Shaghayegh Soudi
2. Mojtaba Jahani
3. Marco Todesco
4. Gregory L Owens
5. Natalia Bercovich
6. Loren H Rieseberg
7. Sam Yeaman

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This is a valuable comparative study of local adaptation using gene-by-environment and gene-by-phenotype correlations. The analyses seemed still incomplete, as the biological take-home messages were obscured by the statistical approaches used, and it remains unclear how to best interpret the level of genome-wide convergence and in inversions. The repeatability of local adaptation across species, and the role of inversions in local adaptation, are questions of considerable empirical interest.

Reviewed by eLife

A timeline of bacterial and archaeal diversification in the ocean

1. Carolina A Martinez-Gutierrez
2. Josef C Uyeda
3. Frank O Aylward

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important paper addresses the challenging problem of dating the origin of several groups of marine microorganisms. However, while much of the analyses are solid, the lack of robustness analysis in molecular dating component such as using alternative time calibrations, clock models, and input gene sets makes the study incomplete. Despite some concerns, this work is a commendable attempt at an extremely difficult problem and will be of broad interest to microbiologists, geologists, and evolutionary biologists.

Reviewed by eLife

Phenotypic stasis with genetic divergence

1. François Mallard
2. Luke Noble
3. Thiago Guzella
4. Bruno Afonso
5. Charles F. Baer
6. Henrique Teotónio

Reviewed by Peer Community in Evolutionary Biology

Major patterns in the introgression history of Heliconius butterflies

1. Yuttapong Thawornwattana
2. Fernando Seixas
3. Ziheng Yang
4. James Mallet

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study revises the evolutionary history of Heliconius butterflies, a well-established model system for understanding speciation in the presence of gene flow between species. Using a convincing statistical phylogenetic approach that relies on the multispecies coalescent, the authors reconstruct the evolution of the lineage, including the timing of speciation events and the history of gene flow. The new phylogeny will be of interest to all researchers working on Heliconius butterflies, and the phylogenetic approach to investigators aiming to understand the history of lineages that have experienced extensive gene flow.

Reviewed by eLife

Not so local: the population genetics of convergent adaptation in maize and teosinte

1. Silas Tittes
2. Anne Lorant
3. Sean McGinty
4. James B. Holland
5. Jose de Jesus Sánchez-González
6. Arun Seetharam
7. Maud Tenaillon
8. Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This potentially important study examines patterns of diversity and divergence in two closely related sub-species of Zea mays, patterns that have bearings on local adaptation in maize and teosinte at intermediate geographic scales. The authors suggest that convergent evolution has been facilitated by both standing variation and gene flow, with independent selective sweeps in the two species. Limitations concerning population sampling, false positive rates in sweep detection and integration of phenotypic data at this stage only inadequately support the major conclusions. The work should in principle be of broad interest to colleagues studying the relationship between domesticated species and their progenitors, as well as those studying instances of parallel evolution.

Reviewed by eLife

Striking parallels between dorsoventral patterning in Drosophila and Gryllus reveal a complex evolutionary history behind a model gene regulatory network

1. Matthias Pechmann
2. Nathan James Kenny
3. Laura Pott
4. Peter Heger
5. Yen-Ta Chen
6. Thomas Buchta
7. Orhan Özüak
8. Jeremy Lynch
9. Siegfried Roth

Reviewed by Review Commons