It has long been evident that genome size is not an accurate measure of organismal complexity. This paradox was “solved” with the discovery of nonfunctional and selfish DNA in the 1970s. However, emerging from this explanation was an enigma of complexity. Neither neutral nor adaptive models can account for all genome size variation across the tree of life. An organism with intraspecific variation is needed to investigate the functional role of genome size differences. Here I use different populations of the seed beetle, Callosobruchus maculatus, with a known intraspecific genome size variation of ~4%. It has previously been shown that a larger genome is associated with higher scores in fitness-related traits for this species. In this study, genome size is regressed with phenotypic plasticity along three different environmental gradients. Genome size did not correlate with plasticity in mass and development time along environmental gradients of temperature and host types. However, the results show that larger genomes are consistent with higher canalization of fitness under different food regimes. This further supports the idea that natural selection acts on genome size variation in this species.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-337280 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Boman, Jesper |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för biologisk grundutbildning |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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