A landscape genetics approach to unravel the complex evolutionary history of th...

• Author(s): Pinto, M. Alice ; Johnston, J. Spencer ; Azevedo, João ; Brandão, Andreia ; Moura, Inês ; Muñoz, Irene ; De la Rúa, Pilar ; Patton, John C.
• Date: 2010
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10198/3736
• Origin: Biblioteca Digital do IPB
• Subject(s): Apis mellifera; Hybrid zone; Landscape genetics; Population genomics
• Document Type: Conference Object
• Language: English

Description

While landscape genetics is in its infancy, it is a rapidly growing research field in part owing to the increasing availability of powerful molecular and analytical tools. By integrating landscape ecology, spatial statistics and population genetics, landscape genetics is allowing an unprecedented understanding of the microevolutionary processes shaping genetic variation, which has important implications for the advance of ecological and evolutionary knowledge. The Iberian honey bee provides a great model system to address evolutionary questions using a landscape genetics framework. First, previous studies suggest that the Iberian honey bee has a hybrid origin and hybrid zones have been favored by evolutionary biologists as powerful natural laboratories to study evolutionary processes. Second, with the publication of the honey bee genome and development of high‐density SNP markers, powerful tools are now available to dissect the relative importance of neutral and adaptive forces in shaping the Iberian honey bee hybrid zone, a goal of central importance as it leads to more robust inferences of demographic history and to identification of adaptive divergence. Herein, we will present an ongoing research project on the Iberian honey bee hybrid zone where the tools of landscape genetics and population genomics will be combined to unravel the challenging evolutionary history of the Iberian honey bee.