Teasing apart the joint effect of demography and natural selection in the birth of a contact zone

Vast population movements induced by recurrent climatic cycles have shaped the genetic structure of plant species. During glacial periods species were confined to low-latitude refugia from which they recolonized higher latitudes as the climate improved. This multipronged recolonization led to many lineages that later met and formed large contact zones. We utilize genomic data from 5000 Picea abies trees to test for the presence of natural selection during recolonization and establishment of a contact zone in Scandinavia. Scandinavian P. abies is today made up of a southern genetic cluster originating from the Baltics, and a northern one originating from Northern Russia. The contact zone delineating them closely matches the limit between two major climatic regions. We show that natural selection contributed to its establishment and maintenance. First, an isolation-with-migration model with genome-wide linked selection fits the data better than a purely neutral one. Second, many loci show signatures of selection or are associated with environmental variables. These loci, regrouped in clusters on chromosomes, are often related to phenology. Altogether, our results illustrate how climatic cycles, recolonization and selection can establish strong local adaptation along contact zones and affect the genetic architecture of adaptive traits

Demography of Birch Populations across Scandinavia

Boreal forests are particularly vulnerable to climate change, experiencing a much more drastic increase in temperatures and having a limited amount of more northern refugia. The trees making up these vast and important ecosystems already had to adapt previously to environmental pressures brought about by the repeated glaciations during past ice ages. Studying the patterns of adaption of these trees can thus provide valuable insights on how to mitigate future damage. This thesis presents and analyses population structure, demo- graphic history and the distribution of fitness effects (DFE) of the diploid Betula pendula and tetraploid B. pubescens across Scandinavia. Birches–being widespread in boreal forests as well as having great economical importance–constitute superb model species. The analyses of this work confirm the expectations on postglacial population expansion and diploid-tetraploid introgression. They furthermore ascertain the presence of two genetic clusters and a remarkably similar DFE for the species. This work also contributes with a transparent, reproducible and reusable pipeline which facilitates running similar analyses for related species