Journal
MOLECULAR ECOLOGY
Volume -, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/mec.16785
Keywords
demographic population modelling; divergent adaptation; ecological genomics; fitness components; gene flow-selection balance; Helianthus petiolaris
Funding
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada [327475]
- National Science Foundation [IGERT 1144807]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Studying conspecific populations living in different microenvironments is important for understanding natural selection. In this study, two sunflower ecotypes in different habitats were investigated to estimate fitness and allele frequency change at different life stages. It was found that habitat- and life stage-specific selection contribute to the maintenance of divergent adaptation between populations.
Conspecific populations living in adjacent but contrasting microenvironments represent excellent systems for studying natural selection. These systems are valuable because gene flow is expected to force genetic homogeneity except at loci experiencing divergent selection. A history of reciprocal transplant and common garden studies in such systems, and a growing number of genomic studies, have contributed to understanding how selection operates in natural populations. While selection can vary across different fitness components and life stages, few studies have investigated how this ultimately affects allele frequencies and the maintenance of divergence between populations. Here, we study two sunflower ecotypes in distinct, adjacent habitats by combining demographic models with genome-wide sequence data to estimate fitness and allele frequency change at multiple life stages. This framework allows us to estimate that only local ecotypes are likely to experience positive population growth (lambda > 1) and that the maintenance of divergent adaptation appears to be mediated via habitat- and life stage-specific selection. We identify genetic variation, significantly driven by loci in chromosomal inversions, associated with different life history strategies in neighbouring ecotypes that optimize different fitness components and may contribute to the maintenance of distinct ecotypes.
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