DOI: 10.5061/dryad.hj68b
title: Data from: Convergent evolution of alternative developmental trajectories associated with diapause in African and South American killifish

description: Annual killifish adapted to life in seasonally ephemeral water-bodies
 exhibit desiccation resistant eggs that can undergo diapause, a period of
 developmental arrest, enabling them to traverse the otherwise inhospitable
 dry season. Environmental cues that potentially indicate the season can
 govern whether eggs enter a stage of diapause mid-way through development
 or skip this diapause and instead undergo direct development. We report,
 based on construction of a supermatrix phylogenetic tree of the order
 Cyprinodontiformes and a battery of comparative analyses, that the ability
 to produce diapause eggs evolved independently at least six times within
 African and South American killifish. We then show in species
 representative of these lineages that embryos entering diapause display
 significant reduction in development of the cranial region and circulatory
 system relative to direct-developing embryos. This divergence along
 alternative developmental pathways begins mid-way through development,
 well before diapause is entered, during a period of purported maximum
 developmental constraint (the phylotypic period). Finally, we show that
 entering diapause is accompanied by a dramatic reduction in metabolic rate
 and concomitant increase in long-term embryo survival. Morphological
 divergence during the phylotypic period thus allows embryos undergoing
 diapause to conserve energy by shunting resources away from energetically
 costly organs thereby increasing survival chances in an environment that
 necessitates remaining dormant, buried in the soil and surrounded by an
 eggshell for much of the year. Our results indicate that adaptation to
 seasonal aquatic environments in annual killifish imposes strong selection
 during the embryo stage leading to marked diversification during this
 otherwise conserved period of vertebrate development.
description: Killifish DNA alignment
 fileDNA alignment file. 311
 taxa. 10960 bp. Phylip format.Killifish alignment
 file.phylipKillifish DNA partition
 fileText file indicating DNA
 data partitions.Killifish partition
 file.txtRAxML_bipartitionsKillifish RAxML tree with bootstrap values.Killifish timetree (Auto, Soft)Killifish timetree generated with MCMCTree program in PAML 4.5. Autocorrelated rates, soft-bounded constraints.KillifishAutoSoftResults.treeKillifish timetree (IR, Soft)Killifish timetree generated with MCMCTree program in PAML 4.5. Independent rates, soft-bounded constraints.KillifishIRsoftResults.treeKillifish timetree (Auto, Hard)Killifish timetree generated with MCMCTree program in PAML 4.5. Autocorrelated rates, hard-bounded constraints.KillifishResultsAutoHard.treeKillifish timetree (IR, Hard)Killifish timetree generated with MCMCTree program in PAML 4.5. Independent rates, hard-bounded constraints.KillifishResultsIRhard.treeEmbryo developmental pathway data setData set documenting morphological and physiological divergence along alternative developmental pathways in annual killifish.Nothobranchius furzeri embryo metabolic rateRate of oxygen consumption (metabolic rate) in Nothobranchius furzeri embryos over the course of development.Nothobranchius furzeri long-term embryo survivalData on long-term survival as a function of developmental pathway in Nothobranchius furzeri embryos.