title: Population dynamics and evolutionary history of the weedy vine Ipomoea hederacea in North America.
abstract: Disentangling the historical evolutionary processes that contribute to patterns of phenotypic and genetic variation is important for understanding contemporary patterns of both traits of interest and genetic diversity of a species. Ipomoea hederacea is a self-compatible species whose geographic origin is contested, and previous work suggests that although there are signals of adaptation (significant leaf shape and flowering time clines), no population structure or neutral genetic differentiation of I. hederacea populations was detected. Here, we use DNA sequence data to characterize patterns of genetic variation to establish a more detailed understanding of the current and historical processes that may have generated the patterns of genetic variation in this species. We resequenced ca. 5000 bp across 7 genes for 192 individuals taken from 24 populations in North America. Our results indicate that North American I. hederacea populations are ubiquitously genetically depauperate, and patterns of nucleotide diversity are consistent with population expansion. Contrary to previous findings, we discovered significant population subdivision and isolation-by-distance, but genetic structure was spatially discontinuous, potentially implicating long-distance dispersal. We further found significant genetic differentiation at sequenced loci but nearly fourfold stronger differentiation at the leaf shape locus, strengthening evidence that the leaf shape locus is under divergent selection. We propose that North American I. hederacea has experienced a recent founder event, and/or population dynamics are best described by a metapopulation model (high turnover and dispersal), leading to low genetic diversity and a patchy genetic distribution.
authors.affiliation: Department of Integrative Biology, College of Natural Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712 brandon.campitelli@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Brandon E
authors.initials: BE
authors.lastname: Campitelli
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, M5S 3B2 Centre for the Analysis of Genome Evolution and Function, University of Toronto, Toronto ON, Canada, M5S 3B2.
authors.forename: John R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Stinchcombe
mesh_terms: D018744:DNA, Plant; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D014644:Genetic Variation; D005838:Genotype; D027741:Ipomoea / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000235:genetics*; D015810:Linkage Disequilibrium; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009656:North America; D018515:Plant Leaves / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D057685:Plant Weeds / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000235:genetics*; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA
chemical_list: D018744:DNA, Plant
keywords: bottlenecks; leaf shape; metapopulation; population expansion; structure