A Multipurpose Gene Facilitates the Evolution of an Animal Weapon

A single gene called BMP11 regulates not only the size and proportions of a water strider’s massively long third legs, but also how it uses the limbs in fights.

| 4 min read
Wild water striders (Microvelia longipes) on a puddle. The animals with long third legs are the males; the others are females.

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ABOVE: Wild water striders (Microvelia longipes) on a puddle. The animals with long third legs are the males; the others are females.
ABDERRAHMAN KHILA

Beetle horns and elk antlers are showy animal weapons that grow to outsized proportions: large beetles, for instance, have disproportionately larger horns than their smaller counterparts do. Although this phenomenon, known as hyperallometry, has been well-documented, the genetic basis for the evolution of hyperallometric traits remains incompletely understood.

Now, researchers at the Institut de Génétique Fonctionelle in Lyon, France, have discovered that the water strider Microvelia longipes’s massively exaggerated third legs, which males use to fight over access to females, are regulated by a gene called BMP11. That gene not only regulates both the size and the scaling pattern of the water strider’s weapon, but unexpectedly, is also involved in males’ fighting behavior, the researchers report in a study published today (May 11) in PLOS Biology.

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Meet the Author

  • Viviane Callier

    Viviane was a Churchill Scholar at the University of Cambridge, where she studied early tetrapods. Her PhD at Duke University focused on the role of oxygen in insect body size regulation. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Arizona State University, she became a science writer for federal agencies in the Washington, DC area. Now, she freelances from San Antonio, Texas.

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