School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK.
Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change (LIB), Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig, Bonn, Germany.
Nat Commun. 2022 Mar 11;13(1):1180. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-28806-7.
Introgression has been proposed as an essential source of adaptive genetic variation. However, a key barrier to adaptive introgression is that recombination can break down combinations of alleles that underpin many traits. This barrier might be overcome in supergene regions, where suppressed recombination leads to joint inheritance across many loci. Here, we study the evolution of a large supergene region that determines a major social and ecological trait in Solenopsis fire ants: whether colonies have one queen or multiple queens. Using coalescent-based phylogenies built from the genomes of 365 haploid fire ant males, we show that the supergene variant responsible for multiple-queen colonies evolved in one species and repeatedly spread to other species through introgressive hybridization. This finding highlights how supergene architecture can enable a complex adaptive phenotype to recurrently permeate species boundaries.
基因渐渗被认为是适应性遗传变异的重要来源。然而，适应性基因渐渗的一个关键障碍是重组可能会破坏许多性状的基础等位基因组合。这个障碍可能在超级基因区域被克服，在超级基因区域，抑制重组导致许多基因座的联合遗传。在这里，我们研究了一个大型超级基因区域的进化，该区域决定了火蚁的一个主要社会和生态特征：蚁群是否有一个蚁后或多个蚁后。我们使用 365 只孤雌雄火蚁雄性基因组构建的基于合并的系统发育树表明，导致多蚁后的超级基因变体在一个物种中进化，并通过渐渗杂交反复传播到其他物种。这一发现强调了超级基因结构如何使复杂的适应性表型反复渗透物种界限。
