Winter storms drive rapid phenotypic, regulatory and genomic shifts in the green anole lizard

Extreme environmental perturbations offer opportunities to observe the effects of natural selection in wild populations. During the winter of 2013–2014, the southeastern United States endured an extreme cold event. We used thermal performance, transcriptomics, and genome scans to measure responses of lizard populations to storm-induced selection. We found significant increases in cold tolerance at the species’ southern limit. Gene expression in southern survivors shifted toward patterns characteristic of northern populations. Comparing samples before and after the extreme winter, 14 genomic regions were differentiated in the surviving southern population; four also exhibited signatures of local adaptation across the latitudinal gradient and implicate genes involved in nervous system function. Together, our results suggest that extreme winter events can rapidly produce strong selection on natural populations at multiple biological levels that recapitulate geographic patterns of local ada...

极端环境扰动为观察自然选择在野生种群中的效应提供了契机。2013-2014年冬季，美国东南部遭遇了一场极端寒冷事件。我们采用热性能（thermal performance）、转录组学（transcriptomics）和基因组扫描（genome scans）技术，测定蜥蜴种群对风暴诱导选择的响应。我们发现，该物种分布南界的种群耐寒性显著增强。南方存活个体的基因表达模式向北方种群特有的模式转变。对比极端冬季前后的样本，存活的南方种群中有14个基因组区域出现分化；其中4个区域在纬度梯度上也表现出局部适应的特征，并涉及与神经系统功能相关的基因。综上，我们的结果表明，极端冬季事件可在多个生物学层面上对自然种群产生快速且强烈的选择压力，这种选择压力重现了局部适应的地理模式...