Document Type
Article
Journal/Book Title/Conference
Nature Communications
Volume
9
Publisher
Nature Research
Publication Date
12-3-2018
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
First Page
1
Last Page
11
Abstract
The remarkable diversity of sex determination mechanisms known in fish may be fuelled by exceptionally high rates of sex chromosome turnovers or transitions. However, the evolutionary causes and genomic mechanisms underlying this variation and instability are yet to be understood. Here we report on an over 30-year evolutionary experiment in which we tested the genomic consequences of hybridisation and selection between two Xiphophorus fish species with different sex chromosome systems. We find that introgression and imposing selection for pigmentation phenotypes results in the retention of an unexpectedly large maternally derived genomic region. During the hybridisation process, the sex-determining region of the X chromosome from one parental species was translocated to an autosome in the hybrids leading to the evolution of a new sex chromosome. Our results highlight the complexity of factors contributing to patterns observed in hybrid genomes, and we experimentally demonstrate that hybridisation can catalyze rapid evolution of a new sex chromosome.
Recommended Citation
Franchini, Paolo, et al. “Long-Term Experimental Hybridisation Results in the Evolution of a New Sex Chromosome in Swordtail Fish.” Nature Communications, vol. 9, no. 1, 2018, pp. 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07648-2.
