Genotyping by sequencing reveals lack of local genetic structure between two German L. populations.

The European spruce bark beetle ( L.) is a serious pest in Norway spruce stands. While usually attacking freshly fallen trees or trees with a reduced defense system, also healthy trees can be infested during massive outbreaks of that can occur after catastrophic events such as drought periods or storms. Knowledge of the genetic structure of this species, especially on local scales is still ambiguous. While local population structure was reported in some studies, others did not detect any differentiation among populations. Here, we used genotyping by sequencing to infer the genetic structure of two populations in western Germany, which had a distance of approx. 58 km from each other. Based on 16,830 SNPs we detected high genetic diversity, but very low genetic differentiation between the populations (F: 0.001) and a lack of population structure. These results suggest a high dispersal ability of .