North African fox genomes show signatures of repeated introgression and adaptation to life in deserts
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Elucidating the evolutionary process of animal adaptation to deserts is key to understanding adaptive responses to climate change. Here we generated 82 individual whole genomes of four fox species (genus Vulpes) inhabiting the Sahara Desert at different evolutionary times. We show that adaptation of new colonizing species to a hot arid environment has probably been facilitated by introgression and trans-species polymorphisms shared with older desert resident species, including a putatively adaptive 25 Mb genomic region. Scans for signatures of selection implicated genes affecting temperature perception, non-renal water loss and heat production in the recent adaptation of North African red foxes (Vulpes vulpes), after divergence from Eurasian populations approximately 78 thousand years ago. In the extreme desert specialists, Rueppell’s fox (V. rueppellii) and fennec (V. zerda), we identified repeated signatures of selection in genes affecting renal water homeostasis supported by gene expression and physiological differences. Our study provides insights into the mechanisms and genetic underpinnings of a natural experiment of repeated adaptation to extreme conditions.
| Originalsprog | Engelsk |
|---|---|
| Tidsskrift | Nature Ecology and Evolution |
| Vol/bind | 7 |
| Udgave nummer | 8 |
| Sider (fra-til) | 1267-1286 |
| ISSN | 2397-334X |
| DOI | |
| Status | Udgivet - 2023 |
Bibliografisk note
Funding Information:
We thank M. Samlali, B. Habib and M. Milanese for their assistance in sampling collection in North Africa. We thank J. V. López Bao, H. R. Maior and F. Alvares for support and assistance in sampling collection in Iberia and J. F. Layna (Spain), V. Soeiro (Parque Biológico de Gaia, Portugal), Temara Zoo and Dream Village (Morocco) for access to foxes in captivity. We thank L. Smith (UC Berkeley), P. Ribeiro, S. Mourão and S. Lopes (CIBIO, UP) for support during laboratory work and generation of data. We thank A. Múrias, C. Pacheco, D. Lobo, M. S. Ferreira, D. Brandt, D. Aguillar-Gomez, L. Pipes, H. Wang and T. Linderoth for helpful discussions during data analysis and interpretation of results. We thank L. Dalén and A. Gaur for kindly sharing the arctic fox reference genome and Bengal fox mitogenome, respectively. We acknowledge M. Laranjeira Rocha for the illustrations featured in this work. This project was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, FCT (PTDC/BIA-EVF/31902/2017 granted to R.G.) and the National Institutes of Health (R01GM138634 granted to R.N.). J.L.R., N.S., M.N., J.C.B. and R.G. worked under scholarships or research contracts from FCT (SFRH/BD/116397/2016, SFRH/BPD/116596/2016, SFRH/BD/144087/2019, CEECINST/00014/2018/CP1512/CT0001 and 2021/00647/CEECIND, respectively).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.
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