New project: Evolution of reproductive mode

We are back in the field and setting up a new experiment on reproductive mode evolution! Delays due to covid are behind us and I'm thrilled to be at CNRS Station for Theoretical and Experimental Ecology and starting our collaboration with ecology legend Jean Clobert. 

First lizard pots are ready and lizards are arriving this week!



This is a NERC funded project with Maureen Bain and Jean Clobert, and the collaboration of Hans Recknagel and new postdoc Morgane Bonade, to dig deeper into the functional development of oviparity in ancestral and derived lineages. Through this experiment we will directly tackle the thorny issue of putative reversal to oviparity ... do lizards break Dollo's Law?

Also perfect timing for some momentum, as our major paper on functional genomics of oviparity vs viviparity is in press. Free online at https://rdcu.be/cy5S2

more new soon!





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 in a collaboration with Amelie Crespel and Shaun Killen, we brought some genomics to an applied evolutionary question - is there evolutionary response to fisheries harvesting? We suspected that forces like size-selective harvest can have impact but what about environmental or demographic context? Open access paper here ! Crespel A, Schneider K, Miller T, Rácz A, Jacobs A, Lindström J, Elmer KR, Killen SS (2021) Genomic basis of fishing-associated selection varies with population density. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 118, e2020833118. Significance: Fisheries-associated selection is recognized as one of the strongest potential human drivers of contemporary evolution in natural populations. The results of this study show that while simulated commercial fishing techniques consistently remove fish with traits associated with growth, metabolism, and social behavior, the specific genes under fishing selection differ depending on the density of the targeted population. This finding suggest
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Welcome to new lab members!

We welcome two new lab members for autumn 2021 - postdoc Morgane Bonade and PhD student Nic Strowbridge.  Morgane is working on the project 'do common lizards break Dollo's Law' by reversing back to oviparity? This is a NERC funded project that tests functionally - using genetic crosses, RNAseq, and phylogeny - some hypotheses put forward in our phylogenomic reconstruction that suggested reversal (open access paper here in MPE ).  Nic is an IAPETUS2 doctoral training programme student working on convergent evolution of colouration and toxicity defence in salamanders, in collaboration with Mike Ritchie at St Andrews.
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New paper: Functional genetic basis of reproductive mode

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Our paper on the genetic basis of parity mode is now published. The functional genetic architecture of egg-laying and live-bearing reproduction in common lizards H. Recknagel, M. Carruthers, A. Yurchenko, M. Nokhbatolfoghahai, N.A. Kamenos, M.M. Bain, K.R. Elmer Nature Ecology and Evolution 2021 SharedIt link:  https://rdcu.be/cy5S2 All amniotes reproduce either by egg-laying (oviparity), which is ancestral to vertebrates, or by live-bearing (viviparity), which has evolved many times independently. However, the genetic basis of these parity modes has never been resolved and consequently its convergence across evolutionary scales is currently unknown. Here we leveraged natural hybridisations between oviparous and viviparous common lizards (Zootoca vivipara) to describe the functional genes and genetic architecture of parity mode and its key traits, eggshell and gestation length, and compared our findings across vertebrates. In these lizards, parity trait genes were associated with prog
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