Sexually dimorphic gene expression in the lateral eyes of Euphilomedes carcharodonta (Ostracoda, Pancrustacea).

BACKGROUND: The evolution and development of sexual dimorphism illuminates a central question in biology: How do similar genomes produce different phenotypes? In an XX/XO system especially the state of a sexually dimorphic trait is determined by differences in gene expression, as there are no additional genetic loci in either sex. Here, we examine the XX/XO ostracod crustacean species Euphilomedes carcharodonta. This species exhibits radical sexual dimorphism of their lateral eyes, females have only a tiny simple lateral eye while males have elaborate ommatidial eyes. RESULTS: We find that males express three of nine eye-development gene homologs at significantly higher levels during juvenile eye development, compared to females. We also find that most eye-development genes examined are pleiotropic, with high expression levels during embryonic development as well as during juvenile eye development. Later, in adults, we find that phototransduction genes are expressed at higher levels in males than in females, as we might expect when comparing ommatidial to simple eyes. CONCLUSIONS: We show here that expression changes of a handful of developmental genes may underlie the radical difference in a dimorphic character. This work gives an important point of comparison for studying eye evolution and development in the Pancrustacea.

Evasion of predators contributes to the maintenance of male eyes in sexually dimorphic Euphilomedes ostracods (Crustacea).

Sexual dimorphisms have long drawn the attention of evolutionary biologists. However, we still have much to learn about the evolutionary, genetic, and developmental drivers of sexual dimorphisms. Here, we introduce ostracods of the genus Euphilomedes (Myodocopida, Ostracoda, and Crustacea) as a promising new system in which to investigate why and how sexual dimorphisms evolve. First, we ask whether male-skewed selective pressure from pelagic predators may help explain a dramatic sexual dimorphism in which male Euphilomedes have compound eyes, but females do not. Manipulative experiments demonstrate that blindfolding reduces the survival rate of male Euphilomedes when they are exposed to predatory fish. Blindfolding of the female rudimentary eyes (rudiments) does not, however, similarly influence the survival rate of brooding females. Further, numerical estimates of sighting distances, based on reasonable extrapolations from Euphilomedes's eye morphology, suggest that the eyes of male Euphilomedes are useful for detecting objects roughly the size of certain pelagic predators, but not conspecifics. We conclude that eyes do not mediate direct interactions between male and female Euphilomedes, but that differences in predation pressure-perhaps associated with different reproductive behaviors-contribute to maintaining the sexually dimorphic eyes of these ostracods. Second, through transcriptome sequencing, we examined potential gene regulatory networks that could underlie sexual dimorphism in Euphilomedes' eyes. From the transcriptome of juvenile male Euphilomedes' eyes, we identified phototransduction genes and components of eye-related developmental networks that are well characterized in Drosophila and other species. The presence of suites of eye regulatory genes in our Euphilomedes juvenile male transcriptome will allow us, in future studies, to test how ostracods regulate the development of their sexually dimorphic eyes.