Premium
Detecting genetic signals of selection in heavily bottlenecked reindeer populations by comparing parallel founder events
Author(s) -
Jong Menno J.,
Lovatt Fiona,
Hoelzel A. Rus
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
molecular ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.619
H-Index - 225
eISSN - 1365-294X
pISSN - 0962-1083
DOI - 10.1111/mec.15837
Subject(s) - biology , founder effect , selection (genetic algorithm) , evolutionary biology , genetic drift , natural selection , locus (genetics) , background selection , balancing selection , population genetics , directional selection , genetics , population , genome , genetic variation , haplotype , gene , artificial intelligence , allele , computer science , demography , sociology
Founder populations are of special interest to both evolutionary and conservation biologists, but the detection of genetic signals of selection in these populations is challenging due to their demographic history. Geographically separated founder populations likely to have been subjected to similar selection pressures provide an ideal but rare opportunity to overcome these challenges. Here we take advantage of such a situation generated when small, isolated founder populations of reindeer were established on the island of South Georgia, and using this system we look for empirical evidence of selection overcoming strong genetic drift. We generated a 70 k ddRADseq single nucleotide polymorphism database for the two parallel reindeer founder populations and screened for signatures of soft sweeps. We find evidence for a genomic region under selection shared among the two populations, and support our findings with Wright–Fisher model simulations to assess the power and specificity of interpopulation selection scans—namely Bayescan, OutFLANK, PCadapt and a newly developed scan called Genome Wide Differentiation Scan (GWDS)—in the context of pairwise source–founder comparisons. Our simulations indicate that loci under selection in small founder populations are most probably detected by GWDS, and strengthen the hypothesis that the outlier region represents a true locus under selection. We explore possible, relevant functional roles for genes in linkage with the detected outlier loci.