Abstract
Drosophila suzukii, or spotted-wing drosophila, is now an established pest in many parts of the world, causing significant damage to numerous fruit crop industries. Native to East Asia, D. suzukii infestations started in the United States a decade ago, occupying a wide range of climates. To better understand invasion ecology of this pest, knowledge of past migration events, population structure, and genetic diversity is needed. In this study, we sequenced whole genomes of 237 individual flies collected across the continental United States, as well as several sites in Europe, Brazil, and Asia, to identify and analyze hundreds of thousands of genetic markers. We observed strong population structure between Western and Eastern US populations, but no evidence of any population structure between different latitudes within the continental United States, suggesting that there are no broad-scale adaptations occurring in response to differences in winter climates. We detect admixture from Hawaii to the Western United States and from the Eastern United States to Europe, in agreement with previously identified introduction routes inferred from microsatellite analysis. We also detect potential signals of admixture from the Western United States back to Asia, which could have important implications for shipping and quarantine policies for exported agriculture. We anticipate this large genomic dataset will spur future research into the genomic adaptations underlying D. suzukii pest activity and development of novel control methods for this agricultural pest.
Highlights
Over the past decade, Drosophila suzukii (Matsumura), known as the spotted-wing drosophila or the Asian vinegar fly, has become an incredibly invasive pest species and a threat to soft-skinned fruit agricultural production worldwide
To determine if population structure exists in D. suzukii living in recently invaded locations, we sequenced wild caught individual D. suzukii flies collected from the continental U.S, Brazil, Ireland, Italy, South Korea, and China, as well as a laboratory strain from Hawaii and Japan (Figure 1, Table S1)
After aligning sequences to the reference genome, we found that average read coverage was low for some individuals and populations, with mean coverage per cluster ranging from 5-11X (Table S1)
Summary
Drosophila suzukii (Matsumura), known as the spotted-wing drosophila or the Asian vinegar fly, has become an incredibly invasive pest species and a threat to soft-skinned fruit agricultural production worldwide (dos Santos et al 2017). In 2008, D. suzukii was detected in California, and by 2009 was widespread across the Western U.S coast (Hauser et al.2009; Bolda et al 2010). In Europe, D. suzukii was first detected in Spain and Italy in 2008 and rapidly spread across Europe, appearing in France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and Belgium by 2012. Its rapid spread across continents suggests that human transportation is likely a major factor, as eggs laid in fresh fruit are difficult to detect before shipment. There is much interest in understanding the patterns of migration and origin of these invasive populations, as these data can be used to inform shipping and quarantine policies and to identify routes of entry
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