Abstract
The satyrine butterfly Coenonympha tullia (Nymphalidae: Satyrinae) displays a deep split between two mitochondrial clades, one restricted to northern Alberta, Canada, and the other found throughout Alberta and across North America. We confirm this deep divide and test hypotheses explaining its phylogeographic structure. Neither genitalia morphology nor nuclear gene sequence supports cryptic species as an explanation, instead indicating differences between nuclear and mitochondrial genome histories. Sex-biased dispersal is unlikely to cause such mito-nuclear differences; however, selective sweeps by reproductive parasites could have led to this conflict. About half of the tested samples were infected by Wolbachia bacteria. Using multilocus strain typing for three Wolbachia genes, we show that the divergent mitochondrial clades are associated with two different Wolbachia strains, supporting the hypothesis that the mito-nuclear differences resulted from selection on the mitochondrial genome due to selective sweeps by Wolbachia strains.
Highlights
Molecular data are being increasingly preferred over morphological traits for species identification and discovery – the exponentially growing number of DNA barcoding sequences without species names stands testimony to this (Parr et al 2012; http://iphylo.blogspot. com/2011/04/dark-taxa-genbank-in-post-taxonomic.html).a 2013 The Authors
Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd
All individuals except one in Clade I were from the Peace River region; the exception being a sample from Athabasca, more than 300 km from the former
Summary
Molecular data are being increasingly preferred over morphological traits for species identification and discovery – the exponentially growing number of DNA barcoding sequences without species names stands testimony to this (Parr et al 2012; http://iphylo.blogspot. com/2011/04/dark-taxa-genbank-in-post-taxonomic.html).a 2013 The Authors. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has been especially popular, becoming the marker of choice in numerous phylogeographic, population genetic, and molecular taxonomic studies. Mitochondrial history does not always reflect the true history of species being studied and is often incongruent with nuclear data (Dupuis et al 2012). Differences between the observed geographical patterns of mitochondrial and nuclear gene variation may be caused by introgression. Mitochondrial genes are less constrained by linkage to selected loci and are expected to introgress deeper than their nuclear counterparts (reviewed in Harrison 1990; Funk and Omland 2003). Mitochondrial introgression has commonly been reported in Lepidoptera (e.g., Sperling 1993; Wahlberg and Nylin 2003; Gompert et al 2006; Salazar et al 2008), despite the prediction, on the basis of Haldane’s rule, that for groups like Lepidoptera in which females are the heterogametic sex, introgression of maternally inherited mtDNA should be unlikely to happen (Sperling 2003)
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