Adapting to climate with limited genetic diversity: Nucleotide, DNA methylation and microbiome variation among populations of the social spider Stegodyphus dumicola.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the role of genetic and nongenetic variants in modulating phenotypes is central to our knowledge of adaptive responses to local conditions and environmental change, particularly in species with such low population genetic diversity that it is likely to limit their evolutionary potential. A first step towards uncovering the molecular mechanisms underlying population-specific responses to the environment is to carry out environmental association studies. We associated climatic variation with genetic, epigenetic and microbiome variation in populations of a social spider with extremely low standing genetic diversity. We identified genetic variants that are associated strongly with environmental variation, particularly with average temperature, a pattern consistent with local adap

SUBMITTER: Aagaard A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9827990 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature