Complex Genomic Structural Variation Underlies Climate Adaptation across Eucalyptus species

Abstract

Climate change threatens global natural forest ecosystems, however, our limited understanding of adaptive genomic variation in wild forest trees restricts our ability to address this threat. Eucalyptus species likely harbour many climate adaptive alleles considering their long-standing evolutionary success across the Australian continent, yet their complex genomic variation and adaptive implications remain undercharacterised. Here, we present a comprehensive pangenome analysis of Eucalyptus viminalis using haplotype-resolved genomes and population-level long-read sequencing spanning the species natural distribution. We discovered complex and simple structural variants (SVs) that doubled the haploid genome length (530 Mbp haploid to 1.1 Gbp pan-genome). Landscape genomic analyses with SVs identified CHILL1, a 400-kb cold-adaptation locus underlined by complex structural variation. Validation across 434 accessions from three Eucalyptus species confirmed the large-effects of CHILL1, which outperforms species classification at predicting cold adaptation. These findings demonstrate that wild tree populations harbour critical adaptive alleles that can expedite climate-informed restoration.