After colonization population sizes may vary across the species range depending on environmental conditions and following colonizations. An interesting question is whether local adaptation occurs more frequently in large ancestral populations or in small derived populations. A higher number of new mutations and a lower effect of genetic drift should favor selection in large populations, whereas small derived populations may require an initial local adaptation event to facilitate the colonization of new habitats. Wild tomatoes are native to a broad range of different habitats characterized by variable abiotic conditions in South America, and represent an ideal system to study this interplay between demography and natural selection. Population genetic analyses and statistical inference of past demography were conducted on pooled-sequencing data from 30 genes (8,080 single nucleotide polymorphisms) from an extensive sampling of 23 Solanum chilense populations over Chile and Peru. We reveal first a north-south colonization associated with relaxed purifying selection in the south as shown by a decrease of genetic variation and an increasing proportion of nonsynonymous polymorphism from north to south, and population substructure with at least four genetic groups. Second, we uncover a dual picture of adaptation consisting of 1) a decreasing proportion of adaptive amino acid substitutions from north to south suggesting that adaptation is favored in large populations, whereas 2) signatures of local adaptation predominantly occur in the smaller populations from the marginal ranges in the south.

Environmental heterogeneity influences coevolution and local adaptation in host–parasite systems. This also concerns applied issues, because the geographic range of parasites may depend on their capacity to adapt to abiotic conditions. We studied temperature-specific adaptation in the wheat yellow/stripe rust pathogen, Puccinia striiformis f.sp. tritici (PST). Using laboratory experiments, PST isolates from northern and southern France were studied for their ability to germinate and to infect bread and durum wheat cultivars over a temperature gradient. Pathogen origin × temperature interactions for infectivity and germination rate suggest local adaptation to high- versus low-temperature regimes in south and north. Competition experiments in southern and northern field sites showed a general competitive advantage of southern over northern isolates. This advantage was particularly pronounced in the southern ‘home’ site, consistent with a model integrating laboratory infectivity and field temperature variation. The stable PST population structure in France likely reflects adaptation to ecological and genetic factors: persistence of southern PST may be due to adaptation to the warmer Mediterranean climate; and persistence of northern PST can be explained by adaptation to commonly used cultivars, for which southern isolates are lacking the relevant virulence genes. Thus, understanding the role of temperature-specific adaptations may help to improve forecast models or breeding programmes.

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The wild tomato species Solanum chilense and S. peruvianum are a valuable non-model system for studying plant adaptation since they grow in diverse environments facing many abiotic constraints. Here we investigate the sequence evolution of regulatory regions of drought and cold responsive genes and their expression regulation. The coding regions of these genes were previously shown to exhibit signatures of positive selection. Expression profiles and sequence evolution of regulatory regions of members of the Asr (ABA/water stress/ripening induced) gene family and the dehydrin gene pLC30-15 were analyzed in wild tomato populations from contrasting environments. For S. chilense, we found that Asr4 and pLC30-15 appear to respond much faster to drought conditions in accessions from very dry environments than accessions from more mesic locations. Sequence analysis suggests that the promoter of Asr2 and the downstream region of pLC30-15 are under positive selection in some local populations of S. chilense. By investigating gene expression differences at the population level we provide further support of our previous conclusions that Asr2, Asr4, and pLC30-15 are promising candidates for functional studies of adaptation. Our analysis also demonstrates the power of the candidate gene approach in evolutionary biology research and highlights the importance of wild Solanum species as a genetic resource for their cultivated relatives.