Bridging the gap between micro- and macroevolution through selection on functional performance

• Grant number: 23/16481-0
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Young Investigators Grants
• Start date: August 01, 2025
• End date: July 31, 2030
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Genetics - Quantitative Genetics
• Principal Investigator: Monique Nouailhetas Simon
• Grantee: Monique Nouailhetas Simon
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (FFCLRP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Ribeirão Preto , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Daniel Moen ; Fábio Perin de Sá ; John Scott Keogh ; Vanessa Kruth Verdade
• Associated scholarship(s): 25/04930-0 - Bridging the gap between micro- and macroevolution through selection on functional performance, BP.JP

Abstract

The connection between micro- and macroevolution is an ongoing debate in evolution-ary biology, still being unclear how much evolutionary processes within populations con-tribute to phenotypic divergence across species. Previous work has leveraged the adap-tive landscape as the bridge between these evolutionary scales, focusing on univariate traits. However, selection is inherently a multivariate process, acting on several traits and on correlations between traits. Moreover, most studies connecting micro- and macroevo-lution focus on development, even though function is the main driver of evolutionary changes in the adaptive landscape. This proposal innovates by explicitly incorporating functional performance to bridge micro- and macroevolution. We will test the effect of se-lection on functional performance in shaping both the pattern of trait correlations within-species and the macroevolutionary landscape across species. We will work with frog species from Brazil and Australia that vary on the number of ecological transitions relat-ed to the strength of functional demands on swimming performance. We focus on swim-ming performance because it has been shown that frog species that regularly swim have a different selective regime than other frog species, constituting an ecological basis for comparisons of how much changes in functional demands change variation within- and across species. We expect morphological trait correlations to change as functional de-mands on swimming change, showing an impact on how much variational patterns with-in-species influence species divergence, which on its turn is also driven by changes in function. Our approach is bold in integrating ecomorphology, evolutionary quantitative genetics, and phylogenetic comparative methods to test for the role of selection on func-tion to connect micro- and macroevolution. This proposal will create a new research line in the associated institution, and promote intellectual interchange between students and researchers from Brazil, US and Australia. (AU)