Figures
Climate adaptation may have driven nostril width differentiation among human populations.
By comparing phenotypic and genetic differentiation across populations, Zaidi et al. show that while most aspects of nose shape seem to be evolving neutrally, the width of the nares shows signals of adaptation to climate. The featured image is an artistic representation of this finding. The network represents evolutionary processes underlying population-differentiation in nares width. Blue boxes represent alleles for narrower nares while red boxes represent alleles for wider nares. Colors in between represent intermediate phenotypes. This color scale serves to highlight the association between nares' width and climate, suggesting that narrow nares might have been favored in cold-dry climates while wider nares were favored in warm-humid climates. See Zaidi et al.
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Image Credit: Arslan A. Zaidi
Citation: (2017) PLoS Genetics Issue Image | Vol. 13(3) March 2017. PLoS Genet 13(3): ev13.i03. https://doi.org/10.1371/image.pgen.v13.i03
Published: March 31, 2017
Copyright: © 2017 Arslan A. Zaidi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
By comparing phenotypic and genetic differentiation across populations, Zaidi et al. show that while most aspects of nose shape seem to be evolving neutrally, the width of the nares shows signals of adaptation to climate. The featured image is an artistic representation of this finding. The network represents evolutionary processes underlying population-differentiation in nares width. Blue boxes represent alleles for narrower nares while red boxes represent alleles for wider nares. Colors in between represent intermediate phenotypes. This color scale serves to highlight the association between nares' width and climate, suggesting that narrow nares might have been favored in cold-dry climates while wider nares were favored in warm-humid climates. See Zaidi et al.
Download March's cover page here.
Image Credit: Arslan A. Zaidi