The role of recombination on genome-wide patterns of local ancestry exemplified by supplemented Brook Charr populations

Abstract

Assessing the immediate and long-term evolutionary consequences of human-mediated hybridization is of major concern for conservation biology. Several studies have documented how selection in interaction with recombination modulates introgression at a genome-wide scale, but few have considered the dynamics of this process within and between chromosomes. Here, we used an exploited freshwater fish, the Brook Charr (Salvelinus fontinalis) for which decades of stocking practices have resulted in admixture between wild populations and an introduced domestic strain to assess both the temporal dynamics and local chromosomal variation in domestic ancestry. We provide a detailed picture of the domestic ancestry patterns across the genome using about 33,000 mapped SNPs genotyped in 611 individuals from 24 supplemented populations. For each lake, we distinguished early and late-generation hybrids using admixture tracts information. To assess the selective outcomes following admixture we then evaluated the relationship between recombination and admixture proportions at three different scales: the whole genome, chromosomes and within 2Mb windows. This allowed us to detect the signature of varied evolutionary mechanisms, as reflected by the finding of genomic regions where the introgression of domestic haplotypes are favored or disfavored. Among these, the main factor modulating local ancestry was likely the presence of deleterious recessive mutations in the wild populations, which can be efficiently hidden to selection in the presence of long admixture tracts. Overall, our results emphasize the relevance of taking into consideration local ancestry information to assess both the temporal and chromosomal variation in local ancestry toward better understanding post-hybridization evolutionary outcomes.