Molecular convergence and transgenic evidence suggest a single origin of laryngeal echolocation in bats

Summary: The laryngeal echolocation is regarded as one of the conspicuous traits that play major roles in flourishing bats. Whether the laryngeal echolocation in bats originated once, however, is still controversial. We here address this question by performing molecular convergence analyses between...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:iScience
Main Authors: Zhen Liu, Peng Chen, Dong-Ming Xu, Fei-Yan Qi, Yuan-Ting Guo, Qi Liu, Jing Bai, Xin Zhou, Peng Shi
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2022
Subjects:
Biological sciences
Genetics
Evolutionary biology
Phylogenetics
Science
Q
toothed whales
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2022.104114
https://doaj.org/article/2fe06b3b43644eb78d35237a8dce7272
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Summary:Summary: The laryngeal echolocation is regarded as one of the conspicuous traits that play major roles in flourishing bats. Whether the laryngeal echolocation in bats originated once, however, is still controversial. We here address this question by performing molecular convergence analyses between ancestral branches of bats and toothed whales. Compared with controls, the molecular convergences were enriched in hearing-related genes for the last common ancestor of bats (LCAB) and extant echolocating bats, but not for the LCA of Old World fruit bats (LCAP). And the convergent hearing gene prestin of the LCAB and the extant echolocating bats functionally converged. More importantly, the high-frequency hearing of the LCAP-prestin knock-in mice decreased with lower cochlear outer hair cell function compared with the LCAB-prestin knock-in mice. Together, our findings provide multiple lines of evidence suggesting a single origin of laryngeal echolocation in the LCAB and the subsequent loss in the LCAP.

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