Developmental mechanisms of longitudinal stripes in the Japanese four‐lined snake

Abstract

The developmental mechanisms of color patterns formation and its evolution remain unclear in reptilian sauropsids. We, therefore, studied the pigment cell mechanisms of stripe pattern formation during embryonic development of the snake Elaphe quadrivirgata. We identified 10 postovipositional embryonic developmental stages based on external morphological characteristics.

Embryonic Development of the Japanese Mamushi, Gloydius blomhoffii (Squamata: Serpentes: Viperidae: Crotalinae)

“…Describing embryonic development of snake species is an important initial step for evolutionary developmental analyses aimed at understanding the molecular and cellular mechanisms of snake body plan evolution. Normal embryonic development has been described in several snake species including both viviparous (garter snake, Thamnophis sirtalis [Zehr, 1962], asp viper, Vipera aspis [Hubert and Dufaure, 1968], jararaca pit viper, Bothropoides jararaca [Polachowski and Werneburg, 2013]) and oviparous (monocled cobra, Naja kaouthia [Jackson, 2002], African rock python, Python sebae [Boughner et al, 2007], African house snake, Boaedon fuliginosus [Boback et al, 2012], Egyptian cobra, Naja haje [Khannoon and Evans, 2014], sand snake, Psammophis sibilans [Khannoon and Zahradnicek, 2017], Japanese four-lined snake, Elaphe quadrivirgata [Matsubara et al, 2014;Murakami et al, 2017]) species.…”

Blue, Black, and Stripes: Evolution and Development of Color Production and Pattern Formation in Lizards and Snakes

“…During embryonic development, the initial positions of melanophores do not correspond exactly to the positions of stripes (Murakami et al, 2017). Melanophores first appearing in the epidermis may form a precursor stripe pattern, and a region of highly dense melanophores in hatchlings follows these precursor stripes.…”

“…Because vivid striped and non-striped morphs possess the same set of epidermal and dermal pigment cells, Murakami et al (2014) hypothesized that the alleles producing the striped morph were dominant under a co-dominance model of one locus with two alleles. Murakami et al (2016Murakami et al ( , 2017 later proposed that the alleles of genes controlling the distribution and density of melanophores would additively influence individual variation in the vividness of stripes, and that the vividness of dorsal stripes is controlled by genes involved in the density gradient of melanophores at particular stages during embryonic development. This inheritance mode of the stripe and non-stripe polymorphism is compatible with the simulation result for the cell-chemotaxis model showing that a stronger chemotactic response generates a vivid longitudinal stripe pattern (Murray and Myerscough, 1991).…”

“…Elucidating the spatial and vertical architecture of pigment cells within skin tissues is a fundamental step to understand color pattern formation (Kuriyama et al, 2006;Saenko et al, 2013;Mallarino et al, 2016). It is necessary to not just describe the composition and spatial arrangement of pigment cells in adults, but also to characterize the processes of pigment cell specification, migration, and spatial organization during embryonic and postembryonic development (Kelsh et al, 2009;Kuriyama et al, 2013;Murakami et al, 2016Murakami et al, , 2017. These analyses can provide insight into gene regulatory networks (GRNs) involved in color pattern formation (Mallarino et al, 2016).…”

“…In this paper, we review recent advances in our understanding of the roles of pigment cells in the production of various skin colors and patterns in reptilian sauropsids (Kuriyama et al, 2006(Kuriyama et al, , 2013(Kuriyama et al, , 2016aMurakami et al, 2017;Alibardi, 2011Alibardi, , 2012Alibardi, , 2013Alibardi, , 2015Kikuchi and Pfennig, 2012;Saenko et al, 2013;Kikuchi et al, 2014;Murakami et al, 2016Murakami et al, , 2017Szydłowski et al, 2016;Jindřich et al, 2019). We approach this topic from the viewpoint of theoretical studies of pattern formation (Murray and Myerscough, 1991;Chang et al, 2009;Allen et al, 2013) and molecular studies of gene systems involved in generating color patterns (Rosenblum et al, 2004;Manceau et al, 2010;Saenko et al, 2015;Irizarry and Bryden, 2016;Iwanishi et al, 2018).…”