Publications by authors named "Lukas Tietgen"
Article Synopsis
- Genome-wide association studies can reveal genetic factors for adaptive traits in wild species, but past research struggled to pinpoint key genes.
- In this study, researchers identified a specific gene responsible for Arctic fox fur color and demonstrated its link to individual fitness, with heterozygous blue foxes showing better survival than homozygous white ones.
- The findings highlight the influence of ecological factors like prey availability on genotype fitness and suggest that whole-genome analyses can effectively uncover significant genes influencing adaptations in wild populations.
Selection for crypsis has been recognized as an important ecological driver of animal colouration, whereas the relative importance of thermoregulation is more contentious with mixed empirical support. A potential thermal advantage of darker individuals has been observed in a wide range of animal species. Arctic animals that exhibit colour polymorphisms and undergo seasonal colour moults are interesting study subjects for testing the two alternative hypotheses: demographic performance of different colour morphs might be differentially affected by snow cover with a cryptic advantage for lighter morphs, or conversely by winter temperature with a thermal advantage for darker morphs.
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