Journal
NATURE
Volume 461, Issue 7267, Pages 1079-1083Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/nature08441
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Funding
- Uehara Memorial Foundation
- Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan
- Water and People Project of Research Institute for Humanity and Nature
- Akkeshi Town Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research in the Lake Akkeshi-Bekanbeushi Wetland
- Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award in the Biomedical Sciences
- National Institutes of Health [T32 GM07270, R01 GM071854, P50 HG02568]
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Sexual antagonism, or conflict between the sexes, has been proposed as a driving force in both sex-chromosome turnover and speciation. Although closely related species often have different sex-chromosome systems, it is unknown whether sex-chromosome turnover contributes to the evolution of reproductive isolation between species. Here we show that a newly evolved sex chromosome contains genes that contribute to speciation in threespine stickleback fish (Gasterosteus aculeatus). We first identified a neo-sex chromosome system found only in one member of a sympatric species pair in Japan. We then performed genetic linkage mapping of male-specific traits important for reproductive isolation between the Japanese species pair. The neo-X chromosome contains loci for male courtship display traits that contribute to behavioural isolation, whereas the ancestral X chromosome contains loci for both behavioural isolation and hybrid male sterility. Our work not only provides strong evidence for a large X-effect on reproductive isolation in a vertebrate system, but also provides direct evidence that a young neo-X chromosome contributes to reproductive isolation between closely related species. Our data indicate that sex-chromosome turnover might have a greater role in speciation than was previously appreciated.
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