A Drive to Driven Model of Mapping Intraspecific Interaction Networks.

Libo Jiang,Ruyu Tai,Mengmeng Sang,Jian Xu,Chuanju Dong,Youxiu Zhu,Claudia Gragnoli,Peng Xu,Hanyuan Zhang,Yan Zhang,Christopher H Griffin,Rongling Wu,Meixia Ye,Yanliang Jiang,Biyin Wu,Lidan Sun,Zixia Zhao

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2019.11.002

Abstract

SummaryCommunity ecology theory suggests that an individual's phenotype is determined by the phenotypes of its coexisting members to the extent at which this process can shape community evolution. Here, we develop a mapping theory to identify interaction quantitative trait loci (QTL) governing inter-individual dependence. We mathematically formulate the decision-making strategy of interacting individuals. We integrate these mathematical descriptors into a statistical procedure, enabling the joint characterization of how QTL drive the strengths of ecological interactions and how the genetic architecture of QTL is driven by ecological networks. In three fish full-sib mapping experiments, we identify a set of genome-wide QTL that control a range of societal behaviors, including mutualism, altruism, aggression, and antagonism, and find that these intraspecific interactions increase the genetic variation of body mass by about 50%. We showcase how the interaction QTL can be used as editors to reconstruct and engineer new social networks for ecological communities.

Highlights

Quantitative genetic theory has long focused on modeling how the phenotype of an individual is determined by its genes, known as quantitative trait loci (QTL), and the environment where it grows (Ritchie et al, 2015)
Animals tend to swarm, flock, or shoal with individuals that resemble themselves in a cooperative way by which the so-called oddity effect, i.e., those individuals displaying difference in appearance from the group are at a greater risk to be predated (Hoare et al, 2000), can be avoided
We argue that Figure 1’s mathematical descriptors derived from wL and wS can measure the strengths of different interaction types that occur between the animals

Summary

Introduction

Quantitative genetic theory has long focused on modeling how the phenotype of an individual is determined by its genes, known as quantitative trait loci (QTL), and the environment where it grows (Ritchie et al, 2015). An increasing body of evidence has revealed that an individual’s phenotype in a population is affected by the phenotypes of other members that coexist with it (Magnuson, 1962; Wolf et al, 1998; Shuster et al, 2006; Ribas et al, 2017; Schneider et al, 2017; Santostefano et al, 2017). The flowering gene FRIGIDA from focal plants in Arabidopsis affects the developmental processes of their neighbors, according to genetic mapping using structural equation models (Wolf et al, 2011). In Drosophila melanogaster, several QTL detected for aggressive behavior are at play by interacting with social environments (Rohde et al, 2017)

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Discussion

Conclusion