phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at o:2193 DOI 10.1038/s42003-023-05264-5 Rapid and biased evolution of canalization during adaptive divergence revealed by dominance in gene expression variability during Arctic charr early development Adaptive evolution may be influenced by canalization, the buffering of developmental processes from environmental and genetic perturbations, but how this occurs is poorly understood. Here, we explore how gene expression variability evolves in diverging and hybridizing populations, by focusing on the Arctic charr (Salvelinus alpinus) of Thingvallavatn, a classic case of divergence between feeding habitats. We report distinct profiles of gene expression variance for both coding RNAs and microRNAs between the offspring of two contrasting morphs (benthic/limnetic) and their hybrids reared in common conditions and sampled at two key points of cranial development. Gene expression variance in the hybrids is substantially affected by maternal effects, and many genes show biased expression variance toward the limnetic morph. This suggests that canalization, as inferred by gene expression variance, can rapidly diverge in sympatry through multiple gene pathways, which are associated with dominance patterns possibly biasing evolutionary trajectories and mitigating the effects of hybridization on adaptive evolution. eng Salvelinus-Alpinus; Morphological Variation; Fluctuating Asymmetry; Phenotypic Plasticity; Directional Selection; Stability; Population; Thingvallavatn; Pleiotropy; Ontogeny 2023-10-11T14:07:16.560Z LOMv1.0 Author BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Horta-Lacueva;Quentin Jean-Baptiste; FN:Quentin Jean-Baptiste Horta-Lacueva X-ORCID:https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9656-1731 END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Kapralova;Kalina Hristova; FN:Kalina Hristova Kapralova X-ORCID:https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5571-0160 END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Hallgrímsson;Benedikt; FN:Benedikt Hallgrímsson X-ORCID:https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7192-9103 END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Jónsson;Zophonías Oddur; FN:Zophonías Oddur Jónsson X-ORCID:https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5798-9647 END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Thorholludottir;Dagny A. V.; FN:Dagny A. V. Thorholludottir END:VCARD https://w3id.org/kim/hcrt/scheme https://w3id.org/kim/hcrt/text Textdokument Text LOMv1.0 yes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 application/pdf 1879593 https://phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at/o:2193 https://phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at/api/object/o:2193/thumbnail LOMv1.0 discipline