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Trilobite tridents demonstrate sexual combat at 400 Mya.

ABSTRACT: The Devonian trilobite Walliserops carries a remarkable anterior cephalic trident posing a challenge to functional interpretation. A unique teratological specimen of Walliserops trifurcatus showing four, rather than three tines, is inconsistent with possible hypotheses connecting the trident to feeding techniques and suggests a sexually selected function. Malformations in a variety of living organisms support this conclusion. Morphometric comparisons to similar structures used for intraspecific combat in dynastine beetles show that the trident occupies a comparable shape space consistent with the hypothesis that it was a sexual combat weapon, the oldest reported example of its kind. This lends further credibility to the idea that some trilobites may have been strongly sexually dimorphic.

SUBMITTER: Gishlick AD

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9942788 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Trilobite tridents demonstrate sexual combat at 400 Mya.

Gishlick Alan D AD Fortey Richard A RA

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20230117 4

The Devonian trilobite <i>Walliserops</i> carries a remarkable anterior cephalic trident posing a challenge to functional interpretation. A unique teratological specimen of <i>Walliserops trifurcatus</i> showing four, rather than three tines, is inconsistent with possible hypotheses connecting the trident to feeding techniques and suggests a sexually selected function. Malformations in a variety of living organisms support this conclusion. Morphometric comparisons to similar structures used for ...[more]

PMID: 36649420

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Project description:BackgroundThe olfactory receptor gene family is one of the largest in the mammalian genome. Previous computational analyses have identified approximately 1,500 mouse olfactory receptors, but experimental evidence confirming olfactory function is available for very few olfactory receptors. We therefore screened a mouse olfactory epithelium cDNA library to obtain olfactory receptor expressed sequence tags, providing evidence of olfactory function for many additional olfactory receptors, as well as identifying gene structure and putative promoter regions.ResultsWe identified more than 1,200 odorant receptor cDNAs representing more than 400 genes. Using real-time PCR to confirm expression level differences suggested by our screen, we find that transcript levels in the olfactory epithelium can differ between olfactory receptors by up to 300-fold. Differences for one gene pair are apparently due to both unequal numbers of expressing cells and unequal transcript levels per expressing cell. At least two-thirds of olfactory receptors exhibit multiple transcriptional variants, with alternative isoforms of both 5' and 3' untranslated regions. Some transcripts (5%) utilize splice sites within the coding region, contrary to the stereotyped olfactory receptor gene structure. Most atypical transcripts encode nonfunctional olfactory receptors, but can occasionally increase receptor diversity.ConclusionsOur cDNA collection confirms olfactory function of over one-third of the intact mouse olfactory receptors. Most of these genes were previously annotated as olfactory receptors based solely on sequence similarity. Our finding that different olfactory receptors have different expression levels is intriguing given the one-neuron, one-gene expression regime of olfactory receptors. We provide 5' untranslated region sequences and candidate promoter regions for more than 300 olfactory receptors, valuable resources for computational regulatory motif searches and for designing olfactory receptor microarrays and other experimental probes.

Dataset Information

Trilobite tridents demonstrate sexual combat at 400 Mya.

Publications

Trilobite tridents demonstrate sexual combat at 400 Mya.

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