Manes, Trains And Antlers Explained: How Showy Male Traits Evolved

 

A team of Wisconsin scientists has turned from the question of why such male traits exist to precisely how they evolved. They have worked out the molecular details of how a simple genetic switch controls decorative traits in male fruit flies and how that switch evolved. By extension, the work explains the mechanics of how the male lion got his mane, how the bull moose acquired such an impressive set of antlers and, yes, how the peacock got its magnificent tail. Writing in the latest edition (Aug. 22, 2008) of the journal Cell, a team led by University of Wisconsin-Madison molecular biologist Sean Carroll describes the regulation and evolution of a genetic circuit in fruit flies that permits the male to decorate its abdomen. The work also shows how the regulation of the same genetic circuit in females represses such ornamentation. "This study is about the how, not the why," says Carroll, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and one of the world's noted evolutionary biologists. "How can this trait be made in one gender and not the other?

Manes, Trains And Antlers Explained: How Showy Male Traits Evolved