Behavior is critical for animal survival and reproduction, and possibly for diversification and evolutionary radiation. However, the genetics behind adaptive variation in behavior are poorly understood. In this work, we examined a fundamental and widespread behavioral trait, exploratory behavior, in one of the largest adaptive radiations on Earth, the cichlid fishes of Lake Tanganyika. By integrating quantitative behavioral data from 57 cichlid species (702 wild-caught individuals) with high-resolution ecomorphological and genomic information, we show that exploratory behavior is linked to macrohabitat niche adaptations in Tanganyikan cichlids. Furthermore, we uncovered a correlation between the genotypes at a single-nucleotide polymorphism upstream of the AMPA glutamate-receptor regulatory gene cacng5b and variation in exploratory tendency. We validated this association using behavioral predictions with a neural network approach and CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing.

中文翻译：

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慈鲷适应性辐射中特定生态位行为倾向的遗传学

行为对于动物的生存和繁殖至关重要，也可能对于多样化和进化辐射至关重要。然而，人们对行为适应性变异背后的遗传学知之甚少。在这项工作中，我们研究了地球上最大的适应性辐射之一——坦噶尼喀湖慈鲷的一种基本且普遍的行为特征，即探索行为。通过将 57 个慈鲷物种（702 个野生捕获个体）的定量行为数据与高分辨率生态形态和基因组信息相结合，我们表明探索行为与坦噶尼喀慈鲷的大生境生态位适应有关。此外，我们发现了 AMPA 谷氨酸受体调节基因上游单核苷酸多态性的基因型之间的相关性cacng5b以及探索倾向的变化。我们使用神经网络方法和 CRISPR-Cas9 基因组编辑的行为预测来验证这种关联。