PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Paul Battlay
AU  - Jonathan Wilson
AU  - Vanessa C. Bieker
AU  - Christopher Lee
AU  - Diana Prapas
AU  - Bent Petersen
AU  - Sam Craig
AU  - Lotte van Boheemen
AU  - Romain Scalone
AU  - Nissanka P. de Silva
AU  - Amit Sharma
AU  - Bojan Konstantinović
AU  - Kristin A. Nurkowski
AU  - Loren H. Rieseberg
AU  - Tim Connallon
AU  - Michael D. Martin
AU  - Kathryn A. Hodgins
TI  - Large haploblocks underlie rapid adaptation in an invasive weed
AID  - 10.1101/2022.03.02.482376
DP  - 2023 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2022.03.02.482376
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2023/01/31/2022.03.02.482376.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2023/01/31/2022.03.02.482376.full
AB  - Adaptation is the central feature and leading explanation for the evolutionary diversification of life. Adaptation is also notoriously difficult to study in nature, owing to its complexity and logistically prohibitive timescale. We leverage extensive contemporary and historical collections of Ambrosia artemisiifolia—an aggressively invasive weed and primary cause of pollen-induced hayfever—to track the phenotypic and genetic causes of recent local adaptation across its native and invasive ranges in North America and Europe, respectively. Large haploblocks— indicative of chromosomal inversions—contain a disproportionate share (26%) of genomic regions conferring parallel adaptation to local climates between ranges, are associated with rapidly adapting traits, and exhibit dramatic frequency shifts over space and time. These results highlight the importance of large-effect standing variants in rapid adaptation, which have been critical to A. artemisiifolia’s global spread across vast climatic gradients.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.