title: Investigating the case of human nose shape and climate adaptation.
abstract: The evolutionary reasons for variation in nose shape across human populations have been subject to continuing debate. An import function of the nose and nasal cavity is to condition inspired air before it reaches the lower respiratory tract. For this reason, it is thought the observed differences in nose shape among populations are not simply the result of genetic drift, but may be adaptations to climate. To address the question of whether local adaptation to climate is responsible for nose shape divergence across populations, we use Qst-Fst comparisons to show that nares width and alar base width are more differentiated across populations than expected under genetic drift alone. To test whether this differentiation is due to climate adaptation, we compared the spatial distribution of these variables with the global distribution of temperature, absolute humidity, and relative humidity. We find that width of the nares is correlated with temperature and absolute humidity, but not with relative humidity. We conclude that some aspects of nose shape may indeed have been driven by local adaptation to climate. However, we think that this is a simplified explanation of a very complex evolutionary history, which possibly also involved other non-neutral forces such as sexual selection.
authors.affiliation: Intercollege Graduate Degree Program in Genetics, Huck Institute of Life Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pennsylvania, United States of America.|Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pennsylvania, United States of America.
authors.forename: Arslan A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Zaidi
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pennsylvania, United States of America.
authors.forename: Brooke C
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-4859-2768
authors.initials: BC
authors.lastname: Mattern
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering-KU Leuven, ESAT/PSI-UZ Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Claes
authors.affiliation: Smurfit Institute of Genetics, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
authors.forename: Brian
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: McEvoy
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, United States of America.|Carl R. Woese Institute of Genomic Biology, The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, United States of America.
authors.forename: Cris
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-9789-1839
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hughes
authors.affiliation: Intercollege Graduate Degree Program in Genetics, Huck Institute of Life Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pennsylvania, United States of America.|Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pennsylvania, United States of America.
authors.forename: Mark D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Shriver
mesh_terms: D000222:Adaptation, Physiological / Q000235:genetics*; D000349:Africa; D001208:Asia; D044466:Asian People / Q000235:genetics; D044383:Black People / Q000235:genetics; D002980:Climate; D005060:Europe; D005260:Female; D040961:Genetic Drift; D005828:Genetics, Population; D005843:Geography; D006801:Humans; D006813:Humidity; D008297:Male; D009666:Nose / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D012641:Selection, Genetic; D013696:Temperature; D044465:White People / Q000235:genetics