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Originally published as Genetics Published Articles Ahead of Print on March 16, 2009.
Genetics, Vol. 182, 303-312, May 2009, Copyright © 2009
doi:10.1534/genetics.109.101444
Resistance Gene Replacement in the Mosquito Culex pipiens: Fitness Estimation From Long-Term Cline Series
Pierrick Labbé*,
,1,
Nicolas Sidos
,
Michel Raymond* and
Thomas Lenormand
* Laboratoire Génétique et Environnement, Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution (UMR CNRS 5554), Université de Montpellier II, F-34095 Montpellier Cedex 05, France, Centre d'Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive (CEFE-UMR 5175 CNRS), F-34293 Montpellier Cedex 05, France and Entente Interdépartementale de Démoustication Méditerranée, 34184 Montpellier Cedex 4, France
1 Corresponding author: IEB, Ashworth Laboratory, Kings Bldgs., Edinburgh, EH9 3JU, United Kingdom.
E-mail: pierrick.labbe{at}ed.ac.uk
How adaptation appears and is later refined by natural selection has been the object of intense theoretical work. However, the testing of these theories is limited by our ability to estimate the strength of natural selection in nature. Using a long-term cline series, we estimate the selection coefficients acting on different alleles at the same locus to analyze the allele replacement observed in the insecticide resistance gene Ester in the mosquito Culex pipiens in the Montpellier area, southern France. Our method allows us to accurately account for the resistance allele replacement observed in this area since 1986. A first resistance allele appeared early, which was replaced by a second resistance allele providing the same advantage but at a lower cost, itself being replaced by a third resistance allele with both higher advantage and cost. It shows that amelioration of the adaptation (here resistance to insecticide) through allele replacement was successively achieved by selection of first a generalist allele (i.e., with a low fitness variance across environments) and later a specialist allele (i.e., with a large fitness variance across environments). More generally, we discuss how precise estimates of the strength of selection obtained from field data help us understand the process of amelioration of adaptation.
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