AI Article Synopsis

  • The study focuses on the rough periwinkle as a model for understanding ecological speciation in environments where different ecotypes coexist, specifically in the context of their geographic separation along the northwestern coast of Spain.
  • Researchers used genetic sequencing of snails from different tidal levels and sites to analyze the degree of genomic divergence between ecotypes adapted to waves and crabs, finding significant sharing of divergent genomic markers among nearby sites.
  • The findings suggest that geographic distance plays a crucial role in genomic differentiation, emphasizing that ecological speciation is influenced by the potential for gene flow between populations rather than purely by phenotypic traits.

Article Abstract

The rough periwinkle, , is a model system for studying parallel ecological speciation in microparapatry. Phenotypically parallel wave-adapted and crab-adapted ecotypes that hybridize within the middle shore are replicated along the northwestern coast of Spain and have likely arisen from two separate glacial refugia. We tested whether greater geographic separation corresponding to reduced opportunity for contemporary or historical gene flow between parallel ecotypes resulted in less parallel genomic divergence. We sequenced double-digested restriction-associated DNA (ddRAD) libraries from individual snails from upper, mid, and low intertidal levels of three separate sites colonized from two separate refugia. Outlier analysis of 4256 SNP markers identified 34.4% sharing of divergent loci between two geographically close sites; however, these sites each shared only 9.9%-15.1% of their divergent loci with a third more-distant site. STRUCTURE analysis revealed that genotypes from only three of 166 phenotypically intermediate mid-shore individuals appeared to result from recent hybridization, suggesting that hybrids cannot be reliably identified using shell traits. Hierarchical AMOVA indicated that the primary source of genomic differentiation was geographic separation, but also revealed greater similarity of the same ecotype across the two geographically close sites than previously estimated with dominant markers. These results from a model system for ecological speciation suggest that genomic parallelism is affected by the opportunity for historical or contemporary gene flow between populations.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6145028PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.4304DOI Listing

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