Global invasion history of the agricultural pest butterfly Pieris rapae revealed with genomics and citizen science.

ABSTRACT: The small cabbage white butterfly, Pieris rapae, is a major agricultural pest of cruciferous crops and has been introduced to every continent except South America and Antarctica as a result of human activities. In an effort to reconstruct the near-global invasion history of P. rapae, we developed a citizen science project, the "Pieris Project," and successfully amassed thousands of specimens from 32 countries worldwide. We then generated and analyzed nuclear (double-digest restriction site-associated DNA fragment procedure [ddRAD]) and mitochondrial DNA sequence data for these samples to reconstruct and compare different global invasion history scenarios. Our results bolster historical accounts of the global spread and timing of P. rapae introductions. We provide molec

SUBMITTER: Ryan SF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6778179 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature