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Twin intromittent organs of Drosophila for traumatic insemination.

ABSTRACT: In several animals, male genitalia create insemination wounds in areas outside the genital orifice of females. I report that such traumatic insemination (TI) occurs in the Drosophila bipectinata complex (Diptera: Drosophilidae) and illustrate a previously unknown evolutionary pathway for this behaviour. Flash fixation of mating pairs revealed the dual function of the paired claw-like basal processes, previously misidentified as a bifid aedeagus: (i) penetration of the female body wall near the genital orifice and (ii) sperm transfer into the genital tract through the wounds. Basal processes in closely related species (Drosophila ananassae and Drosophila pallidosa) also wounded females but did not transfer sperm; this represents a transitional state to TI as observed in the bipectinata complex. Copulatory wounding is suggested to occur in other allied species of the Drosophila melanogaster species group, including D. melanogaster. Ubiquitous sexual conflicts over mating may have led to the evolution of novel intromittent organs for insemination.

SUBMITTER: Kamimura Y

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2391172 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Twin intromittent organs of Drosophila for traumatic insemination.

Kamimura Yoshitaka Y

Biology letters 20070801 4

In several animals, male genitalia create insemination wounds in areas outside the genital orifice of females. I report that such traumatic insemination (TI) occurs in the Drosophila bipectinata complex (Diptera: Drosophilidae) and illustrate a previously unknown evolutionary pathway for this behaviour. Flash fixation of mating pairs revealed the dual function of the paired claw-like basal processes, previously misidentified as a bifid aedeagus: (i) penetration of the female body wall near the g ...[more]

PMID: 17519186

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Project description:Phenotypic evolution can result from gains and losses of genes, mutations in coding sequences, or regulatory mutations affecting gene expression. While the relative importance of these mechanisms is debated, regulatory evolution is recognized as a key driver of phenotypic diversity. In this study, we applied a phylogenetic model to discretized gene expression states (active or inactive) to investigate the evolutionary turnover of organ-specific transcriptomes, which we define as instances where gene expression is activated or deactivated in a particular organ. We focus on transcriptome turnover in two male reproductive organs in 11 species of the Drosophila melanogaster species group. Using the Bayesian inference method zigzag (Thompson et al. 2020), we estimate that testes express a higher proportion of the genome (65--75% of genes, depending on the species) compared to accessory glands (46--64%), with background expression noise producing less than 1% of transcripts in both organs. We find that many conserved genes have gained or lost expression in testes and accessory glands. Our model of joint transcriptome evolution, applied to 8,660 genes conserved as single copy families in all species (singleton genes), revealed similar turnover rates but distinct evolutionary trajectories in the two organs. We estimate that the genes in our data set transition between active and inactive expression states at rates on the order of 10^-9 yr^-1. The two organs experienced accelerated transcriptome turnover on different branches of the Drosophila phylogeny. The accessory glands exhibit greater variation in turnover rates among lineages, suggesting a lower baseline rate with bursts of rapid evolution in a subset of branches on the phylogeny. We do not observe significant differences in turnover rates between X-linked and autosomal genes. Genes that encode transcription factors transition between active and inactive states slower than non-TF genes in the accessory gland, but slightly faster in the testis. The results are robust to the choice of probability cut-offs used to discretize gene expression states, and there is good agreement between the estimates of expression states from zigzag and the inferences from the phylogenetic model. Overall, our study highlights the complex dynamics of transcriptome evolution in male reproductive organs. We discuss the benefits and challenges associated with investigating the evolution of gene expression as a binary trait and suggest potentially fruitful avenues for further methodological development.

Dataset Information

Twin intromittent organs of Drosophila for traumatic insemination.

Publications

Twin intromittent organs of Drosophila for traumatic insemination.

Similar Datasets

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