High-Throughput Sequencing of Transposable Elements Insertions Reveals Genomic Evidence for Adaptive Evolution of the Invasive Asian Tiger Mosquito Towards Temperate Environment

Invasive species represent unique opportunities to evaluate the role of local adaptation during colonization of new environments. Among these, the Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus, is a threatening vector of several human viral diseases, including dengue, chikungunya and the emerging Zika feverssometimes been considered as the reflect of a great "ecological plasticity". However, no study has been conducted to assess the role of adaptive evolution in the ecological success of Ae. albopictus at the molecular level. In the present study we performed a genomic scan to search for potential signatures of selection leading to local adaptation in a hundred of field collected mosquitoes from native populations of Vietnam and temperate invasive populations of Europe. High throughput genotyping of transposable element insertions generated more than 120 000 polymorphic loci, which in their great majority revealed a virtual absence of structure between bio-geographic areas. Nevertheless, 92 outlier loci show a high level of differentiation between temperate and tropical populations. The majority of these loci segregates at high insertion frequencies among European populations, indicating that this pattern could have been caused by recent events of adaptive evolution in temperate areas. Six outliers were located near putative diapause effector genes, suggesting fine tunning of this critical pathway during local adaptation. 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 2 peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not . http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/049197 doi: bioRxiv preprint first posted online Apr. 18, 2016;