View Program - 2022 Population, Evolutionary, and Quantitative Genetics Conference

A wide array of organisms use conspicuous signals to warn predators of secondary defenses in order to avoid predation, a strategy known as aposematism. Poison-dart frogs are an ideal system to study this phenomenon, since aposematism has evolved multiple times from cryptic ancestors. Although the ecological and behavioral processes guiding the evolution of aposematism in poison frogs are relatively well known, the underlying evolutionary genetic and biogeographic mechanisms remain largely unknown. In this talk I explore the possible evolutionary genetic mechanisms behind the convergent evolution of bright coloration in Phyllobates poison-dart frogs from population genetic, biogeographic and developmental perspectives. Our results suggest that conspicuous coloration has evolved convergently three times within the past 3 million years through similar developmental mechanisms, yet at least two of these events appear to be underlied by change at different genes. Finally, preliminary work hints that some of these genes may also underlie variation in other traits associated with coloration, such as body size and toxicity. Overall, poison-dart frogs represent a promising emerging model system for the study of integrative evolutionary biology.

The genetic, organismal, and evolutionary origin of color pattern diversity in Phyllobates poison-dart frogs