ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2014
Estrogen receptor α polymorphism in a species with alternative behavioral phenotypes.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 50 papers.
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Who cites it
50 citing papers in PubMed, 105 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Massive Genomic and Transcriptomic Changes Within a Young Inversion Polymorphism in the Absence of Degeneration.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- The neural substrates of behavioral evolution: Divergent behaviors from conserved neurons.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Neurogenomic landscape associated with status-dependent cooperative behaviour.Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- Repeated behavioural evolution is associated with convergence of gene expression in cavity-nesting songbirds.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- A complex mechanism translating variation of a simple genetic architecture into alternative life histories.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Unique transcriptional signatures correlate with behavioral and psychological symptom domains in Alzheimer's disease.Translational psychiatry · 2024Article
- A supergene in seaweed flies modulates male traits and female perception.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Dynamic molecular evolution of a supergene with suppressed recombination in white-throated sparrows.eLife · 2022Article
- Mutation accumulation opposes polymorphism: supergenes and the curious case of balanced lethals.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Iterative evolution of supergene-based social polymorphism in ants.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Supergenes on steroids.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Bidirectional relationships between testosterone and aggression: a critical analysis of four predictions.Integrative and comparative biology · 2022Article
- Genomic and morphological data shed light on the complexities of shared ancestry between closely related duck species.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Intralocus conflicts associated with a supergene.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Medial amygdala ERα expression influences monogamous behaviour of male prairie voles in the field.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Gonadal steroid hormone receptors in the medial amygdala contribute to experience-dependent changes in stress vulnerability.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2021Article
- Genome-wide variation in DNA methylation linked to developmental stage and chromosomal suppression of recombination in white-throated sparrows.Molecular ecology · 2021Article
- Inside the supergene of the bird with four sexes.Hormones and behavior · 2020Review
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The evolution of behavior relies on changes at the level of the genome; yet the ability to attribute a behavioral change to a specific, naturally occurring genetic change is rare in vertebrates. In the white-throated sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis), a chromosomal polymorphism (ZAL2/2(m)) is known to segregate with a behavioral phenotype. Individuals with the ZAL2(m) haplotype engage in more territorial aggression and less parental behavior than individuals without it. These behaviors are thought to be mediated by sensitivity to sex steroids, and the chromosomal rearrangement underlying the polymorphism has captured a prime candidate gene: estrogen receptor 1 (ESR1), which encodes estrogen receptor α (ERα). We therefore hypothesized that the behavioral effects of the ZAL2(m) rearrangement are mediated by polymorphism in ESR1. We report here that (i) the ESR1 promoter region contains fixed polymorphisms distinguishing the ZAL2(m) and ZAL2 alleles; (ii); those polymorphisms regulate transcription efficiency in vitro and therefore potentially do the same in vivo (iii); the local expression of ERα in the brain depends strongly on genotype in a free-living population; and (iv) ERα expression in the medial amygdala and medial preoptic area may fully mediate the effects of genotype on territorial aggression and parenting, respectively. Thus, our study provides a rare glimpse of how a chromosomal polymorphism has affected the brain and social behavior in a vertebrate. Our results suggest that in this species, differentiation of ESR1 has played a causal role in the evolution of phenotypes with alternative life-history strategies.
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