Genome-wide selection signatures reveal widespread synergistic effects of culture conditions and temperature stress in Drosophila melanogaster

Experimental evolution combined with whole-genome sequencing is a powerful approach to study the adaptive architecture of selected traits, in particular when replicated experimental populations evolving in opposite selective conditions (e.g. hot vs. cold temperature) are compared. Nevertheless, such comparisons could be affected by environmental effects shared between selective regimes (e.g. laboratory adaptation), which complicate the interpretation of selection signatures. Here, we used an experimental design, which takes advantage of the simplicity of selection signatures from founder populations with reduced variation, to study the fitness consequences of the laboratory environment (culture conditions) at two temperature regimes. After 20 generations of adaptation at 18°C and 29°C, strong genome-wide selection signatures were observed. About one third of the selection signatures can be either attributed to temperature effects, laboratory adaptation or the joint effects of both. The fitness consequences reflecting the combined effects of temperature and laboratory adaptation were more extreme in the hot environment for 83% of the affected genomic regions, fitting the pattern of larger expression differences between founders at 29°C. We propose that evolve and resequence (E&R) with reduced genetic variation allows to study genome-wide fitness consequences driven by the interaction of multiple environmental factors.

A comprehensive assessment of inbreeding and laboratory adaptation in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes

Modified Aedes aegypti mosquitoes reared in laboratories are being released around the world to control wild mosquito populations and the diseases they transmit. Several efforts have failed due to poor competitiveness of the released mosquitoes. We hypothesized that colonized mosquito populations could suffer from inbreeding depression and adapt to laboratory conditions, reducing their performance in the field. We established replicate populations of Ae. aegypti mosquitoes collected from Queensland, Australia, and maintained them in the laboratory for twelve generations at different census sizes. Mosquito colonies maintained at small census sizes (≤100 individuals) suffered from inbreeding depression due to low effective population sizes which were only 25% of the census size as estimated by SNP markers. Populations that underwent full-sib mating for 9 consecutive generations had greatly reduced performance across all traits measured. We compared the established laboratory populations with their ancestral population resurrected from quiescent eggs for evidence of laboratory adaptation. The overall performance of laboratory populations maintained at a large census size (400 individuals) increased, potentially reflecting adaptation to artificial rearing conditions. However most individual traits were unaffected, and patterns of adaptation were not consistent across populations. Differences between replicate populations may indicate that founder effects and drift affect experimental outcomes. Though we find limited evidence of laboratory adaptation, mosquitoes maintained at low population sizes can clearly suffer fitness costs, compromising the success of “rear and release” strategies for arbovirus control.