Comparative population genomics of latitudinal variation in D. simulans and D. melanogaster

This article has been accepted for publication and undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may lead to differences between this version and the Abstract Examples of clinal variation in phenotypes and genotypes across latitudinal transects have served as important models for understanding how spatially varying selection and demographic forces shape variation within species. Here we examine the selective and demographic contributions to latitudinal variation through the largest comparative genomic study to date of Drosophila simulans and D. melanogaster, with genomic sequence data from 382 individual fruit flies, collected across a spatial transect of 19 degrees latitude and at multiple timepoints over two years. Consistent with phenotypic studies, we find less clinal variation in D. simulans than D. melanogaster, particularly for the autosomes. Moreover, we find that clinally varying loci in D. simulans are less stable over multiple years than comparable clines in D. melanogaster. D. simulans shows a significantly weaker pattern of isolation by distance than D. melanogaster and we find evidence for a strong contribution of annual re-migration to D. simulans population genetic structure. While population bottlenecks and migration can plausibly explain the differences in amount and stability of clinal variation between the two species, we also observe a significant enrichment of shared clinal genes, suggesting that the selective forces associated with climate are acting on the same genes and phenotypes in D. simulans and D. melanogaster.