Phylogenetic comparative methods are important tools in biology, providing insights into the way traits evolve. There are many technical resources describing how these methods work. Our aim here is to...

Letter to the Editor

Despite a huge media fanfare in which Colossal Biosciences claimed to have resurrected the extinct dire wolf, the company's chief scientist now concedes that the animals are merely modified grey wolve...

Conversations with research organisations offer reassurance to researchers and highlight growing momentum behind fairer, more transparent models of scientific publishing and assessment.

Teleosts are the most diverse group of vertebrates on earth. Their diversity is a testament to the combined effects of genetic, developmental, and evolutionary forces. However, disentangling the interactions between these forces is challenging due to the complexity of the genotype-phenotype relationship and the masking of adaptive genetic signals by genetic noise. Estimates of molecular convergence where changes in the sequence of protein-coding genes lead to identical amino acid substitution across multiple lineages provide strong evidence of adaptive evolution. In this study, we estimated signals for molecular convergence in protein-coding genes across 143 teleost genomes to identify genes and processes that experienced adaptive changes. We find that genes with signals of molecular convergence are implicated in diverse processes ranging from embryonic development, tissue morphogenesis, metabolism, to hormone and heat response. Some convergent substitutions are located on functionally important sites on proteins potentially providing the molecular basis for adaptations to hypoxia, salinity fluctuations, and varying skeletal morphologies. Additionally, single-cell RNA sequencing data from zebrafish showed that the convergent genes have dynamic expression across various cell types during embryonic development. These results highlight the functional importance of the convergent genes as well as their pleiotropic nature. Although traditionally considered a source of genetic constraint, we argue that adaptation via changes in pleiotropic genes are particularly advantageous during periods of ecological shifts. We present the pleiotropic release model which describes how adaptive variation on pleiotropic genes can have large fitness effects, allowing organisms to overcome selective pressures during periods of ecological shifts. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.

Abstract. Dioecious plants are frequently sexually dimorphic. Such dimorphism, which reflects responses to selection acting in opposite directions for male

Pleiotropy (a single mutation altering many traits) has long been seen as hindering adaptation. A new study in PLOS Biology offers a striking counterexample, suggesting that regulatory networks may ev...

Based on phylogenomic and geometric morphometric analyses of 132 anglerfish species, the authors infer a Cretaceous origin of the clade and show that bathypelagic anglerfish are undergoing rapid pheno...

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Teleosts are the most diverse group of vertebrates on earth. Their diversity is a testament to the combined effects of genetic, developmental, and evolutionary forces. However, disentangling the inter...