title: Predictable allele frequency changes due to habitat fragmentation in the Glanville fritillary butterfly.
abstract: Describing the evolutionary dynamics of now extinct populations is challenging, as their genetic composition before extinction is generally unknown. The Glanville fritillary butterfly has a large extant metapopulation in the Åland Islands in Finland, but declined to extinction in the nearby fragmented southwestern (SW) Finnish archipelago in the 20th century. We genotyped museum samples for 222 SNPs across the genome, including SNPs from candidate genes and neutral regions. SW Finnish populations had significantly reduced genetic diversity before extinction, and their allele frequencies gradually diverged from those in contemporary Åland populations over 80 y. We identified 15 outlier loci among candidate SNPs, mostly related to flight, in which allele frequencies have changed more than the neutral expectation. At outlier loci, allele frequencies in SW Finland shifted in the same direction as newly established populations deviated from old local populations in contemporary Åland. Moreover, outlier allele frequencies in SW Finland resemble those in fragmented landscapes as opposed to continuous landscapes in the Baltic region. These results indicate selection for genotypes associated with good colonization capacity in the highly fragmented landscape before the extinction of the populations. Evolutionary response to habitat fragmentation may have enhanced the viability of the populations, but it did not save the species from regional extinction in the face of severe habitat loss and fragmentation. These results highlight a potentially common situation in changing environments: evolutionary changes are not strong enough to fully compensate for the direct adverse effects of environmental change and thereby rescue populations from extinction.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biosciences, University of Helsinki, FI-00014 Helsinki, Finland toby.fountain@helsinki.fi ilkka.hanski@helsinki.fi.
authors.forename: Toby
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Fountain
authors.affiliation: Department of Biosciences, University of Helsinki, FI-00014 Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: Marko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nieminen
authors.affiliation: Department of Biosciences, University of Helsinki, FI-00014 Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: Jukka
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sirén
authors.affiliation: Department of Biosciences, University of Helsinki, FI-00014 Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: Swee Chong
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Wong
authors.forename: Rainer
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Lehtonen
authors.affiliation: Department of Biosciences, University of Helsinki, FI-00014 Helsinki, Finland toby.fountain@helsinki.fi ilkka.hanski@helsinki.fi.
authors.forename: Ilkka
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Hanski
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002080:Butterflies / Q000235:genetics*; D017753:Ecosystem; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D053476:Extinction, Biological; D005387:Finland; D005426:Flight, Animal; D005787:Gene Frequency; D017344:Genes, Insect / Q000235:genetics; D014644:Genetic Variation; D049750:Genome, Insect / Q000235:genetics*; D005838:Genotype; D005843:Geography; D062312:Islands; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D012641:Selection, Genetic
keywords: adaptive genetic response; contemporary evolution; evolution of dispersal; global change; historical DNA samples