Evolutionary Biology

Mosaic of somatic mutations in one of Earth’s largest organisms, Pando

1. Rozenn M Pineau
2. Karen E Mock
3. Jesse Morris
4. Vachel Kraklow
5. Andrea Brunelle
6. Aurore Pageot
7. William C Ratcliff
8. Zachariah Gompert

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This useful study examines patterns of clonal reproduction and somatic mutations in 'Pando', a massive, quaking aspen clone consisting of ~47000 stems. Because the study relies on relatively low-coverage, reduced-representation genomic resequencing data for the detection of somatic mutations, the evidence provided for several of the primary conclusions about clone age and the relationship between mutation accumulation and geographic distance is incomplete.

Reviewed by eLife

Limited directional selection but coevolutionary signals among imprinted genes in A. lyrata

1. Audrey Le veve
2. Ömer Iltas
3. Julien Dutheil
4. Clement Lafon Placette

Reviewed by Peer Community in Evolutionary Biology

No evidence for disassortative mating based on HLA in a small-scale, endogamous population

1. Gillian L Meeks
2. Brooke Scelza
3. Katherine. M Kichula
4. Catrinel Berevoescu
5. Kristin Hardy
6. Ticiana DJ Farias
7. Genelle F Harrison
8. Nicholas R Pollock
9. Neus Font-Porterias
10. Sean Prall
11. Paul J Norman
12. Brenna M Henn

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study addresses the long-debated hypothesis that humans preferentially choose partners with dissimilar immune genes, using data from a small-scale society that allows comparison between arranged and self-chosen partnerships. Across multiple analyses controlling for genome-wide relatedness and examining functional immune diversity, the authors find no evidence of HLA/MHC-based (dis)assortative mating, suggesting that immune gene variation has limited influence on mate choice in this relatively homogeneous population and that the observed patterns instead reflect selection acting directly on immune loci. While the strength of the evidence is compelling for this population, several conclusions rely on indirect reconstruction methods and imputed data for a very complex region of the genome, which may limit how firmly some claims can be supported.

Reviewed by eLife

Wing shape evolution is not constrained by ancestral genetic covariances in the invasive Drosophila suzukii

1. Antoine Fraimout
2. Stéphane Chantepie
3. Nicolas Navarro
4. Céline Teplitsky
5. Vincent Debat

Reviewed by Peer Community in Evolutionary Biology

Evolutionary adaptation proceeds through a small number of phenotypic modules

1. Mohammad Hossein Donyavi
2. Reza Ghelich
3. Kara Schmidlin
4. Grant Kinsler
5. Kerry Geiler-Samerotte

Reviewed by Arcadia Science

Evidence of latency reshapes our understanding of Ebola virus reservoir dynamics

1. John T. McCrone
2. Guy Baele
3. Ifeanyi F. Omah
4. Eddy Kinganda-Lusamaki
5. Joseph A. Brew
6. Luiz M. Carvalho
7. Nicola F. Müller
8. Gytis Dudas
9. Placide Mbala-Kingebeni
10. Marc A. Suchard
11. Andrew Rambaut

Reviewed by Rapid Reviews Infectious Diseases, PREreview