Event Abstract Back to Event Two opposite ways to become tiny: Comparative genomics and phylogenomics of miniature fishes Lukas Rüber1* and Ralf Britz2 1 Natural History Museum of Bern, Switzerland 2 Natural History Museum, United Kingdom Miniaturization, the evolution of extreme reduction in adult body size, is a recurrent and well-documented theme among teleost fishes, with particularly striking examples in the cypriniform subfamily Danioninae, the zebrafish relatives. Two extreme types of miniatures with radically different phenotypes can be distinguished in this group: proportioned dwarfs which are tiny but almost identical copies of their larger relatives, and progenetic (developmentally truncated) miniatures which are characterized by an overall larval appearance, closely resembling an early developmental stage of their larger ancestors. Interestingly, miniaturization via a profound, organism-wide progenesis has facilitated the evolution of spectacular cases of morphological novelties, most of which sexually dimorphic and restricted to males. To investigate for the first time the genomic signatures of progenesis in a vertebrate species, we recently sequenced the whole genome of two members of the dwarf minnow genus Paedocypris, including the smallest fish species with sexually mature individuals <8 mm in length. We found drastic genome size reduction in Paedocypris along with extensive loss of Hox and other developmental genes. An in-depth exploration of the evolutionary consequences of miniaturization in a broader comparative framework in order to specifically elucidate the complex interplay between miniaturization, progenesis, and genomic architecture is now needed to better understand the genomic consequences of miniaturization in these remarkable fishes. Keywords: evolution, Miniaturization, progenesis, Genome Size, phylogenomics Conference: XVI European Congress of Ichthyology, Lausanne, Switzerland, 2 Sep - 6 Sep, 2019. Presentation Type: Oral Topic: EVOLUTIONARY GENOMICS OF FISHES Citation: Rüber L and Britz R (2019). Two opposite ways to become tiny: Comparative genomics and phylogenomics of miniature fishes. Front. Mar. Sci. Conference Abstract: XVI European Congress of Ichthyology. doi: 10.3389/conf.fmars.2019.07.00039 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 14 May 2019; Published Online: 14 Aug 2019. * Correspondence: Dr. Lukas Rüber, Natural History Museum of Bern, Bern, Bern, Switzerland, lukas.ruber@nmbe.ch Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Lukas Rüber Ralf Britz Google Lukas Rüber Ralf Britz Google Scholar Lukas Rüber Ralf Britz PubMed Lukas Rüber Ralf Britz Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.