Separating two tightly linked species-defining phenotypes in Bactrocera with hybrid recombinant analysis.

BACKGROUND: Bactrocera tryoni and Bactrocera neohumeralis mate asynchronously; the former mates exclusively around dusk while the latter mates during the day. The two species also differ in the colour of the post-pronotal lobe (callus), which is predominantly yellow in B. tryoni and brown in B. neohumeralis. We have examined the genetic relationship between the two characters in hybrids, backcrosses and multigeneration hybrid progeny. RESULTS: Our analysis of the mating time of the parental species revealed that while B. tryoni mate exclusively at dusk, B. neohumeralis females pair with B. neohumeralis males during the day and with B. tryoni males at dusk. We found considerable variance in mating time and callus colour among hybrid backcross individuals of both sexes but there was a strong although not invariant trend for callus colour to co-segregate with mating time in both sexes. To genetically separate these two phenotypes we allowed the interspecific F1 hybrids to propagate for 25 generations (F25) without selection for mating time or callus colour, finding that the advanced hybrid population had moved towards B. tryoni phenotypes for both traits. Selection for day mating in replicate lines at F25 resulted in significant phenotypic shifts in both traits towards B. neohumeralis phenotypes in F26. However, we were unable to completely recover the mating time profile of B. neohumeralis and relaxation of selection for day mating led to a shift back towards dusk mating, but not yellow callus colour, by F35. CONCLUSION: We conclude that the inheritance of the two major species-defining traits is separable but tightly linked and involves more than one gene in each case. It also appears that laboratory conditions select for the B. tryoni phenotypes for mating time. We discuss our findings in relation to speciation theory and the likely effects of domestication during the generation of mass release strains for sterile insect control programmes.

Genome-wide patterns of differentiation over space and time in the Queensland fruit fly.

The Queensland fruit fly, Bactrocera tryoni, is a major pest of Australian horticulture which has expanded its range in association with the spread of horticulture over the last ~ 150 years. Its distribution in northern Australia overlaps that of another fruit fly pest to which some authors accord full species status, Bactrocera aquilonis. We have used reduced representation genome-wide sequencing to genotype 359 individuals taken from 35 populations from across the current range of the two taxa, plus a further 73 individuals from six of those populations collected 15-22 years earlier. We find significant population differentiation along an east-west transect across northern Australia which likely reflects limited but bidirectional gene flow between the two taxa. The southward expansion of B. tryoni has led to relatively little genetic differentiation, and most of it is associated with a move into previously marginal inland habitats. Two disjunct populations elsewhere in Australia and three on Melanesian islands are each clearly differentiated from all others, with data strongly supporting establishment from relatively few founders and significant isolation subsequently. Resequencing of historical samples from one of the disjunct Australian populations shows that its genetic profile has changed little over a 15-year period, while the Melanesian data suggest a succession of 'island hopping' events with progressive reductions in genetic diversity. We discuss our results in relation to the control of B. tryoni and as a model for understanding the genetics of invasion and hybridisation processes.

One Hundred Years of Linkage Disequilibrium.

One hundred years ago, the first population genetic calculations were made for two loci. They indicated that populations should settle down to a state where the frequency of an allele at one locus is independent of the frequency of an allele at a second locus, even if these loci are linked. Fifty years later it was realized what is obvious in retrospect, that these calculations ignored the effect of chance segregation of linked loci, an effect now widely recognized following the association of closely linked markers (SNPs) with rare genetic diseases. Linkage disequilibrium is now accepted as the norm for closely linked loci, leading to powerful applications in the mapping of disease alleles and quantitative trait loci, in the detection of sites of selection in the human genome, in the application of genomic prediction of quantitative traits in animal and plant breeding, in the estimation of population size, and in the dating of population divergence.

Extraordinary conservation of entire chromosomes in insects over long evolutionary periods.

Comparison of the genomes of different Drosophila species has shown that six different chromosomes, the so-called ''Muller elements," constitute the building blocks for all Drosophila species. Here, we confirm previous results suggesting that this conservation of the Muller elements extends far beyond Drosophila, to at least tephritid fruit flies, thought to have diverged from drosophilids 60-70 mYr ago. Less than 10 percent of genes differ in chromosome location between the two insect groups. Within chromosomes, however, the order is highly scrambled, as expected from the comparison between Drosophila species. The data also support the notion that the sex chromosomes of tephritid flies originated from an ancestor of the dot chromosome 4 of Drosophila. Overall, therefore, no new chromosome has been created for perhaps a billion generations over the two evolutionary lines. This stability at the chromosome level, which appears to extend to all Diptera including mosquitoes, is in stark contrast to other groups such as mammals, birds, fish and plants, in which chromosome numbers and organization vary enormously among species that have diverged over much fewer generations.

Australian endemic pest tephritids: genetic, molecular and microbial tools for improved Sterile Insect Technique.

Among Australian endemic tephritid fruit flies, the sibling species Bactrocera tryoni and Bactrocera neohumeralis have been serious horticultural pests since the introduction of horticulture in the nineteenth century. More recently, Bactrocera jarvisi has also been declared a pest in northern Australia. After several decades of genetic research there is now a range of classical and molecular genetic tools that can be used to develop improved Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) strains for control of these pests. Four-way crossing strategies have the potential to overcome the problem of inbreeding in mass-reared strains of B. tryoni. The ability to produce hybrids between B. tryoni and the other two species in the laboratory has proved useful for the development of genetically marked strains. The identification of Y-chromosome markers in B. jarvisi means that male and female embryos can be distinguished in any strain that carries a B. jarvisi Y chromosome. This has enabled the study of homologues of the sex-determination genes during development of B jarvisi and B. tryoni, which is necessary for the generation of genetic-sexing strains. Germ-line transformation has been established and a draft genome sequence for B. tryoni released. Transcriptomes from various species, tissues and developmental stages, to aid in identification of manipulation targets for improving SIT, have been assembled and are in the pipeline. Broad analyses of the microbiome have revealed a metagenome that is highly variable within and across species and defined by the environment. More specific analyses detected Wolbachia at low prevalence in the tropics but absent in temperate regions, suggesting a possible role for this endosymbiont in future control strategies.

The draft genome of the pest tephritid fruit fly Bactrocera tryoni: resources for the genomic analysis of hybridising species.

BACKGROUND: The tephritid fruit flies include a number of economically important pests of horticulture, with a large accumulated body of research on their biology and control. Amongst the Tephritidae, the genus Bactrocera, containing over 400 species, presents various species groups of potential utility for genetic studies of speciation, behaviour or pest control. In Australia, there exists a triad of closely-related, sympatric Bactrocera species which do not mate in the wild but which, despite distinct morphologies and behaviours, can be force-mated in the laboratory to produce fertile hybrid offspring. To exploit the opportunities offered by genomics, such as the efficient identification of genetic loci central to pest behaviour and to the earliest stages of speciation, investigators require genomic resources for future investigations. RESULTS: We produced a draft de novo genome assembly of Australia's major tephritid pest species, Bactrocera tryoni. The male genome (650-700 Mbp) includes approximately 150 Mb of interspersed repetitive DNA sequences and 60 Mb of satellite DNA. Assessment using conserved core eukaryotic sequences indicated 98% completeness. Over 16,000 MAKER-derived gene models showed a large degree of overlap with other Dipteran reference genomes. The sequence of the ribosomal RNA transcribed unit was also determined. Unscaffolded assemblies of B. neohumeralis and B. jarvisi were then produced; comparison with B. tryoni showed that the species are more closely related than any Drosophila species pair. The similarity of the genomes was exploited to identify 4924 potentially diagnostic indels between the species, all of which occur in non-coding regions. CONCLUSIONS: This first draft B. tryoni genome resembles other dipteran genomes in terms of size and putative coding sequences. For all three species included in this study, we have identified a comprehensive set of non-redundant repetitive sequences, including the ribosomal RNA unit, and have quantified the major satellite DNA families. These genetic resources will facilitate the further investigations of genetic mechanisms responsible for the behavioural and morphological differences between these three species and other tephritids. We have also shown how whole genome sequence data can be used to generate simple diagnostic tests between very closely-related species where only one of the species is scaffolded.

Estimating effective population size from linkage disequilibrium between unlinked loci: theory and application to fruit fly outbreak populations.

There is a substantial literature on the use of linkage disequilibrium (LD) to estimate effective population size using unlinked loci. The Ne estimates are extremely sensitive to the sampling process, and there is currently no theory to cope with the possible biases. We derive formulae for the analysis of idealised populations mating at random with multi-allelic (microsatellite) loci. The 'Burrows composite index' is introduced in a novel way with a 'composite haplotype table'. We show that in a sample of diploid size S, the mean value of x2 or r2 from the composite haplotype table is biased by a factor of 1-1/(2S-1)2, rather than the usual factor 1+1/(2S-1) for a conventional haplotype table. But analysis of population data using these formulae leads to Ne estimates that are unrealistically low. We provide theory and simulation to show that this bias towards low Ne estimates is due to null alleles, and introduce a randomised permutation correction to compensate for the bias. We also consider the effect of introducing a within-locus disequilibrium factor to r2, and find that this factor leads to a bias in the Ne estimate. However this bias can be overcome using the same randomised permutation correction, to yield an altered r2 with lower variance than the original r2, and one that is also insensitive to null alleles. The resulting formulae are used to provide Ne estimates on 40 samples of the Queensland fruit fly, Bactrocera tryoni, from populations with widely divergent Ne expectations. Linkage relationships are known for most of the microsatellite loci in this species. We find that there is little difference in the estimated Ne values from using known unlinked loci as compared to using all loci, which is important for conservation studies where linkage relationships are unknown.

The covariance of heterozygosity as a measure of linkage disequilibrium between blocks of linked and unlinked sites in Hapmap.

The covariance of heterozygosity serves as a measure of linkage disequilibrium (LD) between genes at two loci, although one that does not have as much information as a parameter such as r2. However, it may be extended to blocks of loci (single nucleotide polymorphisms, SNPs) along a chromosome. This has two advantages when searching for significant associations between different chromosomal regions. Calculations for a data set such as Hapmap are complicated by the large number of pairs of loci (SNPs) that need to be considered. For example, a search for significant associations between SNPs on different chromosomes involves around 1012 calculations for a single population. Furthermore, this may not be an efficient way of detecting associations since r2 values calculated from neighbouring pairs will not be independent of each other. The covariance of heterozygosity provides an average measure of association between blocks of any size, and reduces the number of calculations by a factor of b2, where b is the block size. Unlike the calculation of r2, the covariance of heterozygosity uses just diploid data and is not biased by sample size. Calculations using a block size of 50 have been used to look for associations in the Hapmap data set between regions within and between chromosomes. Within chromosomes, a signal is detected up to around 10 cM. No obviously significant associations have been detected between regions on different chromosomes, although there is a low level of association consistent with departures from random mating.

Linkage disequilibrium and its expectation in human populations.

Abstract Linkage disequilibrium (LD), the association in populations between genes at linked loci, has achieved a high degree of prominence in recent years, primarily because of its use in identifying and cloning genes of medical importance. The field has recently been reviewed by Slatkin (2008). The present article is largely devoted to a review of the theory of LD in populations, including historical aspects.

Divergence between human populations estimated from linkage disequilibrium.

Observed linkage disequilibrium (LD) between genetic markers in different populations descended independently from a common ancestral population can be used to estimate their absolute time of divergence, because the correlation of LD between populations will be reduced each generation by an amount that, approximately, depends only on the recombination rate between markers. Although drift leads to divergence in allele frequencies, it has less effect on divergence in LD values. We derived the relationship between LD and time of divergence and verified it with coalescent simulations. We then used HapMap Phase II data to estimate time of divergence between human populations. Summed over large numbers of pairs of loci, we find a positive correlation of LD between African and non-African populations at levels of up to approximately 0.3 cM. We estimate that the observed correlation of LD is consistent with an effective separation time of approximately 1,000 generations or approximately 25,000 years before present. The most likely explanation for such relatively low separation times is the existence of substantial levels of migration between populations after the initial separation. Theory and results from coalescent simulations confirm that low levels of migration can lead to a downward bias in the estimate of separation time.

Evidence of P-element-induced sister-chromatid exchange in a ring-X chromosome in Drosophila, with implication for a high rate of formation of hybrid elements.

Activation of a single incomplete P element induces recombination at a rate of approximately 0.5-1% in the male germline of Drosophila. Male recombination rises by an order of magnitude to approximately 20% if homologous P elements are involved. The high rate of recombination suggests the possibility that sister-chromatid exchange (SCE) might be elevated to a similar extent, since homologous P elements must always be present in sister chromatids. This possibility was tested by recombining a single P element onto a ring-X chromosome and using sex-ratio distortion to measure the loss of the ring-X due to SCE in the male germline. The results confirmed a rate of loss comparable to that expected with homologous elements, although the rate of loss was variable. Both SCE and recombination results are consistent with the "hybrid element insertion" model, in which the left and right ends from different elements associate, providing that insertion occurs preferentially in the vicinity of a P-element end. For autosomes, hybrid element formation may thus occur at a much higher rate than the 0.5-1% implied by single element recombination, with only a small minority of hybrid element excision events being resolved by recombination.