The genetic changes underlying the initial steps of animal domestication are still poorly understood. We generated a high-quality reference genome for rabbit and compared it to resequencing data from populations of wild and domestic rabbits. We identified over 100 selective sweeps specific to domestic rabbits, but only a relatively small number of fixed (or nearly fixed) SNPs for derived alleles. SNPs with marked allele frequency differences between wild and domestic rabbits were enriched for conserved non-coding sites. Enrichment analyses suggest that genes affecting brain and neuronal development have often been targeted during domestication. We propose that due to a truly complex genetic background, tame behavior in rabbits and other domestic animals evolved by shifts in allele frequencies at many loci, rather than by critical changes at only a few ‘domestication loci’.

Snowshoe hares () maintain seasonal camouflage by molting to a white winter coat, but some hares remain brown during the winter in regions with low snow cover. We show that cis-regulatory variation controlling seasonal expression of the gene underlies this adaptive winter camouflage polymorphism. Genetic variation at clustered by winter coat color across multiple hare and jackrabbit species, revealing a history of recurrent interspecific gene flow. Brown winter coats in snowshoe hares likely originated from an introgressed black-tailed jackrabbit allele that has swept to high frequency in mild winter environments. These discoveries show that introgression of genetic variants that underlie key ecological traits can seed past and ongoing adaptation to rapidly changing environments.

BackgroundThe mosquito Aedes aegypti is the main vector of dengue, Zika, chikungunya and yellow fever viruses. This major disease vector is thought to have arisen when the African subspecies Ae. aegypti formosus evolved from being zoophilic and living in forest habitats into a form that specialises on humans and resides near human population centres. The resulting domestic subspecies, Ae. aegypti aegypti, is found throughout the tropics and largely blood-feeds on humans.ResultsTo understand this transition, we have sequenced the exomes of mosquitoes collected from five populations from around the world. We found that Ae. aegypti specimens from an urban population in Senegal in West Africa were more closely related to populations in Mexico and Sri Lanka than they were to a nearby forest population. We estimate that the populations in Senegal and Mexico split just a few hundred years ago, and we found no evidence of Ae. aegypti aegypti mosquitoes migrating back to Africa from elsewhere in the tropics. The out-of-Africa migration was accompanied by a dramatic reduction in effective population size, resulting in a loss of genetic diversity and rare genetic variants.ConclusionsWe conclude that a domestic population of Ae. aegypti in Senegal and domestic populations on other continents are more closely related to each other than to other African populations. This suggests that an ancestral population of Ae. aegypti evolved to become a human specialist in Africa, giving rise to the subspecies Ae. aegypti aegypti. The descendants of this population are still found in West Africa today, and the rest of the world was colonised when mosquitoes from this population migrated out of Africa. This is the first report of an African population of Ae. aegypti aegypti mosquitoes that is closely related to Asian and American populations. As the two subspecies differ in their ability to vector disease, their existence side by side in West Africa may have important implications for disease transmission.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12915-017-0351-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.