PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Clément Goubert AU - Hélène Henri AU - Guillaume Minard AU - Claire Valiente Moro AU - Patrick Mavingui AU - Cristina Vieira AU - Matthieu Boulesteix TI - High-Throughput Sequencing of Transposable Elements Insertions Reveals Genomic Evidence for Adaptive Evolution of the Invasive Asian Tiger Mosquito Towards Temperate Environment AID - 10.1101/049197 DP - 2016 Jan 01 TA - bioRxiv PG - 049197 4099 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/04/26/049197.short 4100 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/04/26/049197.full AB - 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.Author Summary to evaluate the importance of local adaptation in the ecological success of invasive species, especially in the case of major disease vectors. In this context, we investigated whether adaptation has facilitated the invasion of the Asian tiger mosquito Aedes albopictus in temperate environments. This species, that already transmits Yellow fever and Chikungunya viruses, is also competent for the Zika virus, posing dramatic sanitary consequences given the current species distribution. We genotyped the insertion polymorphism of mobile genetic elements, used as dense genetic markers, in more than a hundred field collected individuals from temperate and tropical populations. We identified several very divergent markers between these populations that points to recent targets of natural selection. In depth analyses of our results suggests that the diapause pathway could have been this way tuned during the invasion of temperate environments.