Parasitism and locomotory capacity calibrate the mitogenomic evolutionary rates in Bilateria

Abstract

The evidence that parasitic lineages exhibit elevated evolutionary rates is limited to Arthropoda and inconsistent. Similarly, the evidence that mitogenomic evolution is faster in species with low locomotory capacity (LC) is limited to a handful of animal lineages. We hypothesised that these two variables are associated and that LC is a major underlying factor driving the elevated evolutionary rates in parasites. We tested this hypothesis by studying mitogenomic evolutionary patterns in 10,911 bilaterian species classified according to their locomotory capacity and parasitic/free-living life history (LH). Evolutionary rates were significantly elevated in endoparasites, ectoparasites with reduced LC, and free-living lineages with reduced LC, but not in ectoparasites and parasitoids with high LC. Nematoda and Arachnida were the only lineages where parasitism was not associated with faster evolution. We propose that LC may also explain these two major outliers. Overall, the LH categorisation explained 35-37%, LC categorisation 26-28%, and together they explained 41-44% of the variance in branch lengths across the Bilateria. Our findings suggest that these two variables play a major role in calibrating the molecular clock in bilaterian animals.