Environment and pathogens shape local and regional adaptations to climate change in the chocolate tree, Theobroma cacao L

• Published in: Molecular ecology Vol. 30; no. 3; pp. 656 - 669
• Main Authors: Nelson, Joel T., Motamayor, Juan C., Cornejo, Omar E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01-02-2021
• Subjects: Abiotic factors; Adaptation; biodiversity; Chocolate; Climate change; Disease resistance; domestication; Environmental changes; Genes; gene‐environment associations; Genomes; Pathogens; plant evolution; population genetics; Populations; selection; selective sweeps; Species; Theobroma cacao; gene-environment associations; population genetics; biodiversity; selection; domestication; selective sweeps; climate change; plant evolution
• ISSN: 0962-1083; 1365-294X
• DOI: 10.1111/mec.15754

Predicting the potential fate of a species in the face of climate change requires knowing the distribution of molecular adaptations across the geographic range of the species. In this work, we analysed 79 genomes of Theobroma cacao, an Amazonian tree known for the fruit from which chocolate is produced, to evaluate how local and regional molecular signatures of adaptation are distributed across the natural range of the species. We implemented novel techniques that incorporate summary statistics from multiple selection scans to infer selective sweeps. The majority of the molecular adaptations in the genome are not shared among populations. We show that ~71.5% of genes under selection also show significant associations with changes in environmental variables. Our results support the interpretation that these genes contribute to local adaptation of the populations in response to abiotic factors. We also found strong patterns of molecular adaptation in a diverse array of disease resistance genes (6.5% of selective sweeps), suggesting that differential adaptation to pathogens also contributes significantly to local adaptations. Our results are consistent with the interpretation that local selective pressures are more important than regional selective pressures in explaining adaptation across the range of a species.