Search

Knowledge on the structure and distribution of genetic diversity is a key aspect to plan and execute an efficient conservation and utilization of the genetic resources of any crop as well as for determining historical demographic inferences. In this work, a large data set of 1,765 accessions of cherimoya (Annona cherimola Mill, Annonaceae), an underutilized fruit tree crop native to the Neotropics and used as a food source by pre‐Columbian cultures, was collected from six different countries across the American continent and amplified with nine highly informative microsatellite markers. The structure analyses, fine representation of the genetic diversity and an ABC approach suggest a Mesoamerican origin of the crop, contrary to previous reports, with clear implications for the dispersion of plant germplasm between Central and South America in pre‐Columbian times. These results together with the potential distribution of the species in a climatic change context using two different climate models provide new insights for the history and conservation of extant genetic resources of cherimoya that can be applied to other currently underutilized woody perennial crops. Ministerio de Economıa y Competitividad/[AGL2013-43732-R]//Unión Europea Ministerio de Economıa y Competitividad/[AGL2016-77267-R]//Unión Europea Fundación BBVA/[BIOCON 08-184/09]/FBBVA/España Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria/[RF2012-00010]/INIA/España Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria/[RFP2012-00016]/INIA/España Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria/[RFP2015-00009]/INIA/España Universidad de Costa Rica/[801-A8-530]/UCR/Costa Rica UCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ciencias Básicas::Centro de Investigación en Biología Celular y Molecular (CIBCM)

Range expansion and contraction has occurred in the history of most species and can seriously impact patterns of genetic diversity. Historical data about range change are rare and generally appropriate for studies at large scales, whereas the individual pollen and seed dispersal events that form the basis of geneflow and colonization generally occur at a local scale. In this study, we investigated range change in Fagus sylvatica on Mont Ventoux, France, using historical data from 1838 to the present and approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) analyses of genetic data. From the historical data, we identified a population minimum in 1845 and located remnant populations at least 200 years old. The ABC analysis selected a demographic scenario with three populations, corresponding to two remnant populations and one area of recent expansion. It also identified expansion from a smaller ancestral population but did not find that this expansion followed a population bottleneck, as suggested by the historical data. Despite a strong support to the selected scenario for our data set, the ABC approach showed a low power to discriminate among scenarios on average and a low ability to accurately estimate effective population sizes and divergence dates, probably due to the temporal scale of the study. This study provides an unusual opportunity to test ABC analysis in a system with a well-documented demographic history and identify discrepancies between the results of historical, classical population genetic and ABC analyses. The results also provide valuable insights into genetic processes at work at a fine spatial and temporal scale in range change and colonization.

The analysis of genetic variation to estimate demographic and historical parameters and to quantitatively compare alternative scenarios recently gained a powerful and flexible approach: the Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC). The likelihood functions does not need to be theoretically specified, but posterior distributions can be approximated by simulation even assuming very complex population models including both natural and human-induced processes. Prior information can be easily incorporated and the quality of the results can be analysed with rather limited additional effort. ABC is not a statistical analysis per se, but rather a statistical framework and any specific application is a sort of hybrid between a simulation and a data-analysis study. Complete software packages performing the necessary steps under a set of models and for specific genetic markers are already available, but the flexibility of the method is better exploited combining different programs. Many questions relevant in ecology can be addressed using ABC, but adequate amount of time should be dedicated to decide among alternative options and to evaluate the results. In this paper we will describe and critically comment on the different steps of an ABC analysis, analyse some of the published applications of ABC and provide user guidelines.

Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) is a powerful and widely used approach in inference of population history. However, the computational effort required to discriminate among alternative historical scenarios often limits the set that is compared to those considered more likely a priori. While often justifiable, this approach will fail to consider unexpected but well-supported population histories. We used a hierarchical tournament approach, in which subsets of scenarios are compared in a first round of ABC analyses and the winners are compared in a second analysis, to reconstruct the population history of an oak gall wasp, Synergus umbraculus (Hymenoptera, Cynipidae) across the Western Palaearctic. We used 4,233 bp of sequence data across seven loci to explore the relationships between four putative Pleistocene refuge populations in Iberia, Italy, the Balkans and Western Asia. We compared support for 148 alternative scenarios in eight pools, each pool comprising all possible rearrangements of four populations over a given topology of relationships, with or without founding of one population by admixture and with or without an unsampled "ghost" population. We found very little support for the directional "out of the east" scenario previously inferred for other gall wasp community members. Instead, the best-supported models identified Iberia as the first-regional population to diverge from the others in the late Pleistocene, followed by divergence between the Balkans and Western Asia, and founding of the Italian population through late Pleistocene admixture from Iberia and the Balkans. We compare these results with what is known for other members of the oak gall community, and consider the strengths and weaknesses of using a tournament approach to explore phylogeographic model space.