Convergent latitudinal erosion of circadian systems in a rapidly diversifying order of fishes

Biological clocks allow organisms to anticipate cyclical environmental changes, yet in high-latitude or deep-sea habitats, the diel cues that entrain these rhythms are often seasonally diminished or absent. Fishes of the order Perciformes have rapidly diversified across these arrhythmic ecosystems, raising the question of whether changes to circadian rhythms and biological clock genetic architecture are a component of their evolutionary success. Here, we used a comparative genomic approach to investigate patterns of core biological clock gene loss across 96 perciform and five outgroup species. We found widespread and lineage-specific loss in core clock genes, particularly in the convergently evolving polar and deep-sea suborders Notothenioidei and Cottoidei. This trend of clock gene loss was significantly amplified with higher-latitude species. To determine if these genomic signatures reflect a functional loss of rhythmicity, we performed metabolic phenotyping on three notothenioid species. We found a consistent lack of circadian metabolic oscillations during the late austral fall across all notothenioids, including the sub-Antarctic sister lineage to the cryonotothenioid adaptive radiation, Eleginops maclovinus. Experimental data across Perciformes, combined with suborder-wide patterns of gene loss, suggest that a release from circadian constraints occurred early in their diversification, potentially facilitating the repeated expansion of these fishes into polar and deep-sea habitats.