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Evolutionary Conundrum Research Paper

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Cameron Sprenger
News &Views Article
4/4/16

Use it or Lose it: An Evolutionary Conundrum

Evolution is typically viewed as a progressive force, so the notion of losing a previously beneficial adaptation is highly abnormal and subject to critical examination. Within the scientific community there has been and still is a great interest in what might drive losing adaptive traits, a process called degenerative evolution. Conceptually this confirms that evolution does not have a single direction, but is rather adaptive in nature. And what is more adaptive than vision? For this reason, the blind Mexican cavefish is a model for degenerative evolution. Even more interesting, this species exists in two forms: one living on the surface retaining sight …show more content…
Recently, for the first time, researchers have approached this question using genetics and embryonic development yielding significant data on the subject. The two theories that were considered prior to the creation of the pleitropic theory attempted to provide reason to the bizarre and evolutionarily unique loss of the eye. The first theory suggested that eyes were too expensive in an environment where resources are limited, so the loss of eyes was advantageous from the perspective of energy conservation (2). The second theory suggests that losing sight does not impose any cost to the fish as they can’t see anyway due to the cave environment (2). As originally stated by Darwin “As it is difficult to imagine that eyes, though useless, could in any way be injurious to animals living in darkness, I attribute their loss solely to disuse” (2). Darwin suggests the eyes may have disappear by random chance, or in other words, have been deleted without …show more content…
Correlated with these findings are the reduction of superficial neuromasts (SN) found within the eye orbit (EO) associated with but not exclusively determined by shh (sonic hedgehog) gene. His work supports the most recent of the three theories, asserting that the loss of vision is due to pleitropy. Yamamoto Yoshizawa has used this theory for the basis of much (of his work (4, 5, 6). With knowledge of the various populations Vibration Attraction Behavior and eye orbital superficial neuromasts, Yoshizawa and his team employed multiple non-visual constructive traits and eye regression by doing quantitative genetic analysis of crosses between surface fish and cavefish (5). (Figure 1) Using this method, it was shown that vibration related behavior and the sensory receptors found within the cavefish eye orbit are genetically correlated with reduced eye size. (Figure 1C) In an effort to further investigate this correlation Yoshizawa’s team employed quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping, to uncover the genetic basis of this correlation. The sections of DNA (the locus) that correlates with variation in phenotype form two clusters of overlapping quantitative trait loci on linkage groups 2 and 17 (5). (Figure 1B)

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