Genomic estimates of mutation and substitution rates contradict the evolutionary speed hypothesis of the latitudinal diversity gradient

Author:

Liu Haoxuan12,Sun Mengyi1,Zhang Jianzhi1ORCID

Affiliation:

1. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA

2. Center for Evolutionary & Organismal Biology and the Fourth Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou 310058, People's Republic of China

Abstract

The latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG) refers to a decrease in biodiversity from the equator to the poles. The evolutionary speed hypothesis, backed by the metabolic theory of ecology, asserts that nucleotide mutation and substitution rates per site per year are higher and thereby speciation rates are higher at higher temperatures, generating the LDG. However, prior empirical investigations of the relationship between the temperature and mutation or substitution rate were based on a few genes and the results were mixed. We here revisit this relationship using genomic data. No significant correlation between the temperature and mutation rate is found in 13 prokaryotes or in 107 eukaryotes. An analysis of 234 diverse trios of bacterial taxa indicates that the synonymous substitution rate is not significantly associated with the growth temperature. The same data, however, reveal a significant negative association between the nonsynonymous substitution rate and temperature, which is explainable by a larger fraction of detrimental nonsynonymous mutations at higher temperatures due to a stronger demand for protein stability. We conclude that the evolutionary speed hypothesis of the LDG is unsupported by genomic data and advise that future mechanistic studies of the LDG should focus on other hypotheses.

Funder

National Institutes of Health

Zhejiang University

Publisher

The Royal Society

Subject

General Agricultural and Biological Sciences,General Environmental Science,General Immunology and Microbiology,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology,General Medicine

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