Developmental bias predicts 60 million years of wing shape evolution

Abstract

The degree to which developmental biases affect trait evolution is subject to much debate. Here, we first quantify fluctuating asymmetry as a measure of developmental variability, i.e., the propensity of developmental systems to create some phenotypic variants more often than others, and show that it predicts phenotypic and standing genetic variation as well as deep macroevolutionary divergence in wing shape in sepsid flies. Comparing our data to the findings of a previous study demonstrates that developmental variability in the sepsid fly Sepsis punctum strongly aligns with mutational, standing genetic, and macroevolutionary variation in the Drosophilidae––a group that diverged from the sepsid lineage ca. 64 My ago. We also find that developmental bias in S. punctum wing shape aligns with the effects of allometry, but less so with putatively adaptive thermal plasticity and population differentiation along latitude. Our findings demonstrate that developmental bias in fly wings predicts evolvability and macroevolutionary trajectories on a much greater scale than previously appreciated but also suggest that causal explanations for such alignments may go beyond simple constraint hypotheses.