So Google Scholar now links to an.. 18+ website to read my latest @natecoevo.nature.com paper. 🤔

It does include some guppy mating behavior.. but this seems like an overreaction.

Our paper on the genetics of guppy color patterns has now been assigned an issue in NEE: doi.org/10.1038/s415...

With this paper, we also publish all 14,100 guppy photos used in the study, including before and after alignment and ornament extraction:
doi.org/10.20383/103...

The sex-linked ornaments instead show loci of very large effect at copy number variants. The locus of largest effect for orange pattern is at texim, a gene with many duplications to the Y. For black, the largest effect loci is prex1, an X-linked CNV with a know role in NCC migration.

Next, we sequenced 300 males to map this variation to the genome.

First, for autosomal ornaments we find a polygenic architecture. Many of the loci are near genes involved in neural crest cell migration. These cells later develop into the chromatophores responsible for coloration.

Among all this variation, we can distinguish 7 orange and 8 black ornaments. Together, these can combine into 32k different patterns, although we observe just 691.

Each of the ornaments have different contributions from the autosomes and the sex chromosomes. Only 2 show clear Y-linked inheritance.

Combining the pedigree with >14k guppy photos, we can model the inheritance of ornamentation across the body. Localized heritability is very high overall. Each body location has its own genetic architecture. We see clear X- and Y-linked inheritance, but only for a minority of the body plan.

We set up a selection experiment and phenotyped 3,200 males in a pedigree. Using a deep learning pipeline, we extracted all the ornamentation and aligned the images to a common reference shape.

In just three generations, our selection lines differed by 2x, confirming high heritability.

We see 100s of unique color patterns in just a single guppy stock tank in the lab. It has often been said that these patterns are inherited as a single Y-linked locus. Yet, testosterone-treated females also develop ornaments.

So how does the genome encode this variation? Is it really all on the Y?

🚨 Super exited to see our paper on the inheritance and genetic basis of guppy color variation come out in @natecoevo.nature.com‬ rdcu.be/eugWV

Guppy males have enormous variation in color patterns, with many combinations of ornamental spots and stripes. But where does all this variation come from?

Saw Alfred Wallace and some of his butterflies in London.