Meeting Abstract
In many species, males and females show important phenotypic differences. Nevertheless, the evolution of sex-specific traits is not fully understood, so investigating the evolutionary pathway of sexually dimorphic traits could provide insight as to how new genetic information along with novel traits originate. In many terrestrial isopod species, males have more and larger bristles on their first and second pairs of legs than females, similar in some ways to the well studied sex combs of Drosophila species. The goals of this experiment are: first, to characterize variation in leg bristle sexual dimorphism across terrestrial isopod species; and second, to look for evidence of convergent evolution at the molecular level by looking at the expression patterns of genes homologous to those involved in the development of sex combs in Drosophila. I expect my results to show Scr and dsx homologs to be expressed at higher levels in the first two male legs in comparison to other male legs and in any legs of females.
