Decoupled Maternal and Zygotic Genetic Effects Shape the Evolution of Development

Many animals develop indirectly via a larval stage that is morphologically and ecologically distinct from its adult form. Hundreds of lineages across animal phylogeny have secondarily lost larval forms, instead producing offspring that directly develop into adult form without a distinct larval ecological niche 1–7 . Indirect development in the sea is typically planktotrophic: females produce large numbers of small offspring that require exogenous planktonic food to develop before metamorphosing into benthic juveniles. Direct development is typically lecithotrophic: females produce a smaller number of larger eggs, each developing into a juvenile without the need for larval feeding, provisioned by yolk. Evolutionary theory suggests that these alternative developmental strategies represent stable alternative fitness peaks, while intermediate states are disfavored 4,8–11 . Transitions from planktotrophy to lecithotrophy thus require crossing a fitness valley and represent radical and coordinated transformations of life-history, fecundity, ecology, dispersal, and development 7,12–16 . Here we dissect this transition in Streblospio benedicti , the sole genetically tractable species that harbors both states as heritable variation 17–19 . We identify large-effect loci that act maternally to influence larval size and independent, unlinked large-effect loci that act zygotically to affect discrete aspects of larval morphology. Because lecithotrophs and planktotrophs differ in both size and morphology, the genetic basis of larval form exhibits strong maternal-by-zygotic epistasis for fitness 20 . The fitness of zygotic alleles depends on their maternal background, creating a positive frequency-dependence that may homogenize local populations. Developmental and population genetics interact to shape larval evolution.