Journal
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
Volume 38, Issue 8, Pages 3126-3143Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msab086
Keywords
speciation; gene flow; population genomics; bumblebees; islands of divergence
Funding
- Swedish Research Council Formas [2016-00535]
- SciLifeLab National Biodiversity Project [NP00046]
- Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, National Bioinformatics Infrastructure Sweden at SciLifeLab
- National Genomics Infrastructure in Stockholm and Uppsala - Science for Life Laboratory
- Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation
- Swedish Research Council [2018-05973]
- Formas [2016-00535] Funding Source: Formas
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Evidence suggests that gene flow commonly occurs between recently diverged species, despite barriers to gene flow. Genetic barriers to gene flow often accumulate in regions of low recombination and near centromeres.
Evidence is accumulating that gene flow commonly occurs between recently diverged species, despite the existence of barriers to gene flow in their genomes. However, we still know little about what regions of the genome become barriers to gene flow and how such barriers form. Here, we compare genetic differentiation across the genomes of bumblebee species living in sympatry and allopatry to reveal the potential impact of gene flow during species divergence and uncover genetic barrier loci. We first compared the genomes of the alpine bumblebee Bombus sylvicola and a previously unidentified sister species living in sympatry in the Rocky Mountains, revealing prominent islands of elevated genetic divergence in the genome that colocalize with centromeres and regions of low recombination. This same pattern is observed between the genomes of another pair of closely related species living in allopatry (B. bifarius and B. vancouverensis). Strikingly however, the genomic islands exhibit significantly elevated absolute divergence (d(XY)) in the sympatric, but not the allopatric, comparison indicating that they contain loci that have acted as barriers to historical gene flow in sympatry. Our results suggest that intrinsic barriers to gene flow between species may often accumulate in regions of low recombination and near centromeres through processes such as genetic hitchhiking, and that divergence in these regions is accentuated in the presence of gene flow.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available