Association of putatively adaptive genetic variation with climatic variables differs between a parasite and its host

Abstract

Parasitism is a pervasive phenomenon in nature with the relationship between species driving evolution in both parasite and host. Due to their host-dependent lifestyle, parasites may adapt to the abiotic environment in ways that differ from their hosts or from free-living relatives; yet rarely has this been assessed. Here, we test two competing hypotheses related to whether putatively adaptive genetic variation in a specialist mistletoe associates with the same, or different, climatic variables as its host species. We sampled 11 populations of the specialist mistletoe Amyema gibberula var. tatei (n = 154) and 10 populations of its associated host Hakea recurva subsp. recurva (n = 160). Reduced-representation sequencing was used to obtain genome-wide markers and putatively adaptive variation detected using genome scan methods. Climate associations were identified using generalized dissimilarity modelling, and these were mapped geographically to visualize the spatial patterns of genetic composition. Our results supported the hypothesis of parasites and host species responding differently to climatic variables. Temperature was relatively more important in predicting allelic turnover in the specialist mistletoe while precipitation was more important for the host. This suggests that parasitic plants and host species may respond differently to selective pressures, potentially as a result of differing nutrient acquisition strategies. Specifically, mistletoes acquire water from hosts (rather than the abiotic environment), which may provide a buffer to precipitation as a selective pressure. This work deepens and complements the physiological and other ecological studies of adaptation and provides a window into the evolutionary processes that underlie previously observed phenomena. Applying these methods to a comparative study in a host–parasite system has also highlighted factors that affect the study of selection pressure on nonmodel organisms, such as differing adaptation rates and lack of reference genomes.