10.5061/DRYAD.FJ34D
Nugent, Bridget M.
The University of Texas at Austin
Stiver, Kelly A.
Yale University
Alonzo, Suzanne H.
University of California System
Hofmann, Hans A.
The University of Texas at Austin
Data from: Neuroendocrine profiles associated with discrete behavioural
variation in Symphodus ocellatus, a species with male alternative
reproductive tactics
Dryad
dataset
2016
Alternative Reproductive Tactics
Symphodus ocellatus
Holocene
Alternative Reproductive Tactics
2016-08-29T15:05:40Z
2016-08-29T15:05:40Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.13828
611658071 bytes
1
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
The molecular mechanisms underlying phenotypic plasticity are not well
understood. Identifying mechanisms underlying alternative reproductive
tactics (ARTs) in species for which the behavioural and fitness
consequences of this variation are well characterized provides an
opportunity to integrate evolutionary and mechanistic understanding of the
maintenance of variation within populations. In the ocellated wrasse
Symphodus ocellatus, the behavioural phenotypes of three distinct male
morphs (sneakers, satellites and nesting males), which arise from a single
genome, have been thoroughly characterized. To determine the
neuroendocrine and genomic mechanisms associated with discrete phenotypic
variation and ARTs in S. ocellatus in their natural environment, we
constructed a whole-brain de novo transcriptome and compared global
patterns of gene expression between sexes and male morphs. Next, we
quantified circulating cortisol and 11-ketotestosterone (11-kt), mediators
of male reproductive behaviours, as well as stress and gonadal steroid
hormone receptor expression in the preoptic area, ventral subpallial
division of the telencephalon and dorsolateral telencephalon, critical
brain regions for social and reproductive behaviours. We found higher
levels of 11-kt in nesting males and higher levels of cortisol in sneaker
males relative to other male morphs and females. We also identified
distinct patterns of brain region-specific hormone receptor expression
between males such that most hormone receptors are more highly expressed
in satellites and nesting males relative to sneakers and females. Our
results establish the neuroendocrine and molecular mechanisms that
underlie ARTs in the wild and provide a foundation for experimentally
testing hypotheses about the relationship between neuromolecular processes
and reproductive success.
Whole Brain Transcriptome for S. ocellatusDe novo transcriptome assembly
was performed using Trinity (Haas et al. 2013) using RNA-Seq reads from
male (sneaker, satellite, and nesting male) and female S. ocellatus whole
brain mRNA. Lowly-abundant transcripts with an FPKM < 0.5 were
filtered by RSEM, resulting in an assembly with 80,103 contigs with an N50
of 2119. To annotate the S. ocellatus transcriptome we employed Blastx
(using an E-value cutoff of 1X10-10) on protein sequences for Oryzias
latipes and Takifugu rubripes obtained from the Ensembl BioMart database,
which resulted in the alignment of 25,856 contigs to the O. latipes genome
and 25,213 contigs to the T. rubripes genome. Contigs that aligned with
high confidence to more than one database were annotated based on the
lowest E value and highest % identity to either reference genome,
resulting in an assembly where roughly 32% of high quality contigs were
successfully annotated. Contigs without annotations are labelled with
contig tags generated by Trinity while annotated contigs have gene symbol
following contig tags.annotated.fastaRSEM filtered
assemblyRSEM.annotated.fasta
France
Corsica