Genetic tradeoffs and conditional neutrality contribute to local adaptation

Divergent natural selection promotes local adaptation and can lead to reproductive isolation of populations in contrasting environments; however, the genetic basis of local adaptation remains largely unresolved in natural populations. Local adaptation might result from antagonistic pleiotropy, where alternate alleles are favored in distinct habitats, and polymorphism is maintained by selection. Alternatively, under conditional neutrality some alleles may be favored in one environment but neutral at other locations. Antagonistic pleiotropy maintains genetic variation across the landscape; however, there is a systematic bias against discovery of antagonistic pleiotropy since the fitness benefits of local alleles need to be significant in at least two environments.
Here, we develop a generally applicable method to investigate polygenic local adaptation and identify loci that are the targets of selection. This approach evaluates allele frequency changes after selection at loci across ...