Graded BMP signals modulate yellow and red color in fishes impacting adult pigment pattern and behavior

SUMMARY Among the most interesting adult traits are those with roles in animal communication. Yet developmental mechanisms by which genes drive cell behaviors in building the final forms of such traits are rarely known. In this context, pigmentation is useful because colors and patterns often provide signals in mate choice, predation avoidance and other behaviors and pigmentation is unusually accessible to observation and manipulation. Here we focus on some of the most prominent signaling colors—red, orange and yellow—and show how BMP signaling at the cellular level allows for a very different kind of signal at the organismal level. Using pearl danio, Danio albolineatus , we find that spatially and temporally graded BMP signals promote development of yellow/orange xanthophores over red erythrophores in the fin of this species and a distantly related minnow, Tanichthys albonubes , and that conserved mechanisms, involving BMP co-receptor Rgmb, regulate differentiation of other pigment cell types in corresponding locations of zebrafish, D. rerio . We further use mutants of D. albolineatus with more red or more yellow cells than wild-type to demonstrate female responsiveness to carotenoid-based color differences between males in shoaling preference assays, and we show the existence of polygenic standing variation for this pigmentary trait. Our findings illustrate a chain of function spanning hierarchical levels and provide a deeper understanding of pigmentary form and function and its evolution. HIGHLIGHTS Fate specification of alternative red or yellow pigment cell types in the fin of a minnow, pearl danio, depends on thresholds and gradients in BMP signaling during fin outgrowth. Genetic loss of BMP signaling leads to production of red over yellow carotenoids with resulting “super-red” fish preferred by females in shoaling assays. BMP-dependence of pigmentary traits is conserved across species with standing, polygenic variation for fin pattern and color in pearl danio.