Population genetic structure of a centipede species with high levels of developmental instability.

Giuseppe Fusco,Giorgio Bertorelle,Małgorzata Leśniewska,Leonardo Congiu

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0126245

Giuseppe Fusco, Giorgio Bertorelle + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0126245

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Abstract

European populations of the geophilomorph centipede Haplophilus subterraneus show a high proportion of individuals with morphological anomalies, suggesting high levels of developmental instability. The broad geographic distribution of this phenomenon seems to exclude local environmental causes, but the source of instability is still to be identified. The goal of the present study was to collect quantitative data on the occurrence of phenodeviants in different populations, along with data on the patterns of genetic variation within and between populations, in order to investigate possible association between developmental instability and genetic features. In a sample of 11 populations of H. subterraneus, distributed in western and central Europe, we looked for phenodeviants, in particular with respect to trunk morphology, and studied genetic variation through the genotyping of microsatellite loci. Overall, no support was found to the idea that developmental instability in H. subterraneus is related to a specific patterns of genetic variation, including inbreeding estimates. We identified a major genetic partition that subdivides French populations from the others, and a low divergence among northwestern areas, which are possibly related to the post-glacial recolonization from southern refugia and/or to recent anthropogenic soil displacements. A weak correlation between individual number of leg bearing segments and the occurrence of trunk anomalies seems to support a trade-off between these two developmental traits. These results, complemented by preliminary data on developmental stability in two related species, suggest that the phenomenon has not a simple taxonomic distribution, while it exhibits an apparent localization in central and eastern Europe.

Highlights

Developmental stability is the property of an organism to buffer random perturbations of the developmental process
Our investigation on the geographic distribution of the occurrence of anomalies, complemented by the check for correlations between the incidence of anomalies and genetic variation patterns, provide no support to the idea that developmental instability recorded in the European populations of the centipede H. subterraneus is related to some specific genetic feature of the populations or the single individuals
Our data seems to exclude that inbreeding depression or outbreeding depression are the cause of the morphological defects observed in this centipede

Summary

Introduction

Developmental stability is the property of an organism to buffer random perturbations of the developmental process. The higher the level of developmental stability, the closer the features of the expressed phenotype to that of the target phenotype, i.e. the phenotype specified by the genetic makeup of the organism and the environmental conditions during its development. Random non heritable deviations from bilateral symmetry, or fluctuating bilateral asymmetries [4], have been largely employed to investigate levels and patterns of developmental instability in many taxa [5,6]. Like annelids, arthropods, vertebrates and many other taxa [8], which present serially homologous structures along the main body axis, deviations from translational symmetry can be effectively analysed through morphometric analysis, either through the study of fluctuating translational asymmetries [7,9], or studying the occurrence of macroscopic defects at the level of serial structures (frequency of segmental phenodeviants [10])

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