Conserved wing shape variation across biological scales unveils dialectical relationships between micro- and macroevolution
(2025) In Communications Biology 8(1).- Abstract
Variation enables short-term evolution (microevolution), but its role in long-term evolution (macroevolution) is debated. Here, we analyzed a dataset of Drosophila wing variation across six levels of biological organization to demonstrate that microevolutionary variation and macroevolutionary divergence are positively correlated at all levels from variation within an individual to macroevolution over 40 million years. Surprisingly, the strongest relationship was between developmental noise and macroevolutionary divergence—which are traditionally considered the most distant— while the relationship between standing genetic variation and population divergence was modest, despite established theoretical predictions and empirical evidence.... (More)
Variation enables short-term evolution (microevolution), but its role in long-term evolution (macroevolution) is debated. Here, we analyzed a dataset of Drosophila wing variation across six levels of biological organization to demonstrate that microevolutionary variation and macroevolutionary divergence are positively correlated at all levels from variation within an individual to macroevolution over 40 million years. Surprisingly, the strongest relationship was between developmental noise and macroevolutionary divergence—which are traditionally considered the most distant— while the relationship between standing genetic variation and population divergence was modest, despite established theoretical predictions and empirical evidence. Our results indicate that the congruence of the developmental system with the long-term history of fluctuations in adaptive peaks creates dialectical relationships between microevolution and macroevolution.
(Less)
- author
- Saito, Keita LU ; Tsuboi, Masahito LU and Takahashi, Yuma
- organization
- publishing date
- 2025-07-07
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- in
- Communications Biology
- volume
- 8
- issue
- 1
- article number
- 990
- publisher
- Nature Publishing Group
- external identifiers
-
- pmid:40624351
- scopus:105010080514
- ISSN
- 2399-3642
- DOI
- 10.1038/s42003-025-08376-2
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 66d75844-cc44-4abb-8831-4cc23b9671ae
- date added to LUP
- 2025-10-22 14:36:34
- date last changed
- 2025-10-27 16:23:39
@article{66d75844-cc44-4abb-8831-4cc23b9671ae,
abstract = {{<p>Variation enables short-term evolution (microevolution), but its role in long-term evolution (macroevolution) is debated. Here, we analyzed a dataset of Drosophila wing variation across six levels of biological organization to demonstrate that microevolutionary variation and macroevolutionary divergence are positively correlated at all levels from variation within an individual to macroevolution over 40 million years. Surprisingly, the strongest relationship was between developmental noise and macroevolutionary divergence—which are traditionally considered the most distant— while the relationship between standing genetic variation and population divergence was modest, despite established theoretical predictions and empirical evidence. Our results indicate that the congruence of the developmental system with the long-term history of fluctuations in adaptive peaks creates dialectical relationships between microevolution and macroevolution.</p>}},
author = {{Saito, Keita and Tsuboi, Masahito and Takahashi, Yuma}},
issn = {{2399-3642}},
language = {{eng}},
month = {{07}},
number = {{1}},
publisher = {{Nature Publishing Group}},
series = {{Communications Biology}},
title = {{Conserved wing shape variation across biological scales unveils dialectical relationships between micro- and macroevolution}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42003-025-08376-2}},
doi = {{10.1038/s42003-025-08376-2}},
volume = {{8}},
year = {{2025}},
}