2. Academic Validation
  3. Homology and the evolution of vocal folds in the novel avian voice box

Homology and the evolution of vocal folds in the novel avian voice box

  • Curr Biol. 2023 Dec 29:S0960-9822(23)01668-8. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.12.013.
Charlie Longtine 1,  Chad M Eliason 2,  Darcy Mishkind 1,  ChangHee Lee 1,  Michael Chiappone 2,  Franz Goller 3,  Jay Love 4,  Evan P Kingsley 5,  Julia A Clarke 6,  Clifford J Tabin 7
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
  • 2 The Jackson School of Geosciences and Department of Integrative Biology, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
  • 3 School of Biological Sciences, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA; Department of Zoophysiology, University of Münster, 48149 Münster, Germany.
  • 4 School of Biological Sciences, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA.
  • 5 Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA. Electronic address: [email protected].
  • 6 The Jackson School of Geosciences and Department of Integrative Biology, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA. Electronic address: [email protected].
  • 7 Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA. Electronic address: [email protected].
PMID: 38183987 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.12.013
Abstract

The origin of novel traits, those that are not direct modifications of a pre-existing ancestral structure, remains a fundamental problem in evolutionary biology. For example, little is known about the evolutionary and developmental origins of the novel avian vocal organ, the syrinx. Located at the tracheobronchial junction, the syrinx is responsible for avian vocalization, but it is unclear whether avian vocal folds are homologous to the laryngeal vocal folds in other tetrapods or convergently evolved. Here, we identify a core developmental program involved in avian vocal fold formation and infer the morphology of the syrinx of the ancestor of modern birds. We find that this ancestral syrinx had paired sound sources induced by a conserved developmental pathway and show that shifts in these signals correlate with syringeal diversification. We show that, despite being derived from different developmental tissues, vocal folds in the syrinx and larynx have similar tissue composition and are established through a strikingly similar developmental program, indicating that co-option of an ancestral developmental program facilitated the origin of vocal folds in the avian syrinx.

Keywords

deep homology; evolutionary novelty; larynx; syrinx.

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