TY - JOUR T1 - Changes of gene expression but not cytosine methylation are associated with behavioural plasticity of parental care JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/139634 SP - 139634 AU - CB Cunningham AU - L Ji AU - EC McKinney AU - KM Benowitz AU - RJ Schmitz AU - AJ Moore Y1 - 2017/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/05/19/139634.abstract N2 - Standard evolutionary theory emphasizes that heritable genetic sequence changes drive evolutionary change. This approach has been questioned recently for its ability to explain and incorporate some biological phenomena, such as phenotypic plasticity and epigenetics. Individual plasticity in behaviour, being an extreme form of phenotypic plasticity, has been one of the challenges posed and thus examining the mechanisms underlying behavioural plasticity provides a test case for an extended evolutionary synthesis. To provide such a test, we contrasted gene expression during male parental care in Nicrophorus vespilloides under different conditions. Parental care in N. vespilloides includes regurgitation of pre-digested food to offspring, and males typically do not provide care. However, plastic male care equivalent to females can be induced by removing a female. Our experimental design allowed contrasts that isolated effects associated with parenting, social conditions, or behavioural plasticity. We investigated differences of both gene expression and cytosine methylation. We found a hierarchy of influences on gene expression with those associated with a transition to parenting showing the most gene expression changes, then gene expression changes associated with different social contexts, and lastly gene expression underlying behavioural plasticity. The genes methylated were nearly identical amongst larvae and adult samples. Further, changes of cytosine methylation were not associated with changes of gene expression in behavioural plasticity. Even in the most plastic of traits, behaviour, genetically programmed alteration of gene expression is a more robust explanation than other non-genetic explanations, and thus standard evolutionary explanations appear to be sufficient for even extreme forms of phenotypic plasticity. ER -