Global patterns of genomic and phenotypic variation in the invasive harlequin ladybird.
Hongran Li, Yan Peng, Yansong Wang, Bryce Summerhays, Xiaohan Shu, Yumary Vasquez, Hannah Vansant, Christy Grenier, Nicolette Gonzalez, Khyati Kansagra, Ryan Cartmill, Edison Ryoiti Sujii, Ling Meng, Xuguo Zhou, Gábor L Lövei, John J Obrycki, Arun Sethuraman, Baoping Li
Author Information
Hongran Li: Department of Entomology, College of Plant Protection, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, People's Republic of China.
Yan Peng: Shenzhen Branch, Guangdong Laboratory of Lingnan Modern Agriculture, Genome Analysis Laboratory of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shenzhen, People's Republic of China.
Yansong Wang: Department of Entomology, College of Plant Protection, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, People's Republic of China.
Bryce Summerhays: Department of Biological Sciences, California State University, San Marcos, CA, USA.
Xiaohan Shu: Department of Entomology, College of Plant Protection, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, People's Republic of China.
Yumary Vasquez: Department of Biological Sciences, California State University, San Marcos, CA, USA.
Hannah Vansant: Department of Biological Sciences, California State University, San Marcos, CA, USA.
Christy Grenier: Department of Biological Sciences, California State University, San Marcos, CA, USA.
Nicolette Gonzalez: Department of Biological Sciences, California State University, San Marcos, CA, USA.
Khyati Kansagra: Department of Biological Sciences, California State University, San Marcos, CA, USA.
Ryan Cartmill: Department of Biological Sciences, California State University, San Marcos, CA, USA.
Edison Ryoiti Sujii: Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária (Embrapa), Brasilia, DF, Brazil.
Ling Meng: Department of Entomology, College of Plant Protection, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, People's Republic of China.
Xuguo Zhou: Department of Entomology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA.
Gábor L Lövei: Department of Agroecology, Flakkebjerg Research Centre, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
John J Obrycki: Department of Entomology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA.
Arun Sethuraman: Department of Biological Sciences, California State University, San Marcos, CA, USA. asethuraman@sdsu.edu.
Baoping Li: Department of Entomology, College of Plant Protection, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, People's Republic of China. lbp@njau.edu.cn. ORCID
BACKGROUND: The harlequin ladybird Harmonia axyridis (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae), native to Asia, has been introduced to other major continents where it has caused serious negative impacts on local biodiversity. Though notable advances to understand its invasion success have been made during the past decade, especially with then newer molecular tools, the conclusions reached remain to be confirmed with more advanced genomic analyses and especially using more samples from larger geographical regions across the native range. Furthermore, although H. axyridis is one of the best studied invasive insect species with respect to life history traits (often comparing invasive and native populations), the traits responsible for its colonization success in non-native areas warrant more research. RESULTS: Our analyses of genome-wide nuclear population structure indicated that an eastern Chinese population could be the source of all non-native populations and revealed several putatively adaptive candidate genomic loci involved in body color variation, visual perception, and hemolymph synthesis. Our estimates of evolutionary history indicate (1) asymmetric migration with varying population sizes across its native and non-native range, (2) a recent admixture between eastern Chinese and American populations in Europe, (3) signatures of a large progressive, historical bottleneck in the common ancestors of both populations and smaller effective sizes of the non-native population, and (4) the southwest origin and subsequent dispersal routes within its native range in China. In addition, we found that while two mitochondrial haplotypes-Hap1 and Hap2 were dominant in the native range, Hap1 was the only dominant haplotype in the non-native range. Our laboratory observations in both China and USA found statistical yet slight differences between Hap1 and Hap2 in some of life history traits. CONCLUSIONS: Our study on H. axyridis provides new insights into its invasion processes into other major continents from its native Asian range, reconstructs a geographic range evolution across its native region China, and tentatively suggests that its invasiveness may differ between mitochondrial haplotypes.
