Login / Signup

Mating system impacts the genetic architecture of adaptation to heterogeneous environments.

Kathryn A HodginsSamuel Yeaman
Published in: The New phytologist (2019)
Self-fertilisation has consequences for variation across the genome as it reduces effective population size, effect recombination rates and pollen flow, with implications for local adaptation. We conducted simulations of divergent stabilising selection on a quantitative trait with drift, pollen flow, mutation, recombination and different outcrossing rates. We quantified trait divergence and the genetic architecture of adaptation. We conducted an FST outlier analysis to identify candidate loci and quantified the impact of mating system on detectability. Selfing promoted trait divergence mainly through reductions in pollen flow. Moreover, trait architecture became more diffuse with selfing. Average effect size of trait loci was lower, while the number of loci, and their clustering distance increased. The genetic architecture of selfers was also more diffuse than outcrossers for equivalent migration rates. However, when deleterious alleles were included, architectures became more concentrated in selfers, likely to be because of reductions in population size caused by mutational meltdown and impacts of background selection on Ne . Our simulations demonstrate that mating system has important impacts on adaptive divergence of traits and the genetic landscape underlying that divergence. Selfing has a significant effect on detectability of regions of the genome important for adaptation because of neutral divergence and diffuse trait architecture.
Keyphrases
  • genome wide
  • dna methylation
  • copy number
  • low grade
  • dna damage
  • molecular dynamics
  • dna repair
  • mass spectrometry
  • rna seq