The dataset presented here was collected by the GenTree project (EU-Horizon 2020), which aims to improve the use of forest genetic resources across Europe by better understanding how trees adapt to their local environment. This dataset of individual tree-core characteristics including ring-width series and whole-core wood density was collected for seven ecologically and economically important European tree species: silver birch (Betula pendula), European beech (Fagus sylvatica), Norway spruce (Picea abies), European black poplar (Populus nigra), maritime pine (Pinus pinaster), Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris), and sessile oak (Quercus petraea). Tree-ring width measurements were obtained from 3600 trees in 142 populations and whole-core wood density was measured for 3098 trees in 125 populations. This dataset covers most of the geographical and climatic range occupied by the selected species. The potential use of it will be highly valuable for assessing ecological and evolutionary responses to environmental conditions as well as for model development and parameterization, to predict adaptability under climate change scenarios.

Primeval forests are today exceedingly rare in Europe, and transfer of forest reproductive material for afforestation and improvement has been very common, especially over the last two centuries. This can be a serious impediment when inferring past population movements in response to past climate changes such as the last glacial maximum (LGM), some 18,000 years ago. In the present study, we genotyped 1,672 individuals from three Picea species ( P. abies , P. obovata , and P. omorika ) at 400K SNPs using exome capture to infer the past demographic history of Norway spruce ( P. abies ) and estimate the amount of recent introduction used to establish the Norway spruce breeding program in southern Sweden. Most of these trees belong to P. abies and originate from the base populations of the Swedish breeding program. Others originate from populations across the natural ranges of the three species. Of the 1,499 individuals stemming from the breeding program, a large proportion corresponds to recent introductions from mainland Europe. The split of P. omorika occurred 23 million years ago (mya), while the divergence between P. obovata and P. abies began 17.6 mya. Demographic inferences retrieved the same main clusters within P. abies than previous studies, that is, a vast northern domain ranging from Norway to central Russia, where the species is progressively replaced by Siberian spruce ( P. obovata ) and two smaller domains, an Alpine domain and a Carpathian one, but also revealed further subdivision and gene flow among clusters. The three main domains divergence was ancient (15 mya), and all three went through a bottleneck corresponding to the LGM. Approximately 17% of P. abies Nordic domain migrated from P. obovata ~103K years ago, when both species had much larger effective population sizes. Our analysis of genomewide polymorphism data thus revealed the complex demographic history of Picea genus in Western Europe and highlighted the importance of material transfer in Swedish breeding program.

Gene copy-number variations are widespread in natural populations, but investigating their phenotypic consequences requires contemporary duplications under selection. Such duplications have been found at the ace-1 locus (encoding the organophosphate and carbamate insecticides’ target) in the mosquito Anopheles gambiae (the major malaria vector); recent studies have revealed their intriguing complexity, consistent with the involvement of various numbers and types (susceptible or resistant to insecticide) of copies. We used an integrative approach, from genome to phenotype level, to investigate the influence of duplication architecture and gene-dosage on mosquito fitness. We found that both heterogeneous (i.e., one susceptible and one resistant ace-1 copy) and homogeneous (i.e., identical resistant copies) duplications segregated in field populations. The number of copies in homogeneous duplications was variable and positively correlated with acetylcholinesterase activity and resistance level. Determining the genomic structure of the duplicated region revealed that, in both types of duplication, ace-1 and 11 other genes formed tandem 203kb amplicons. We developed a diagnostic test for duplications, which showed that ace-1 was amplified in all 173 resistant mosquitoes analyzed (field-collected in several African countries), in heterogeneous or homogeneous duplications. Each type was associated with different fitness trade-offs: heterogeneous duplications conferred an intermediate phenotype (lower resistance and fitness costs), whereas homogeneous duplications tended to increase both resistance and fitness cost, in a complex manner. The type of duplication selected seemed thus to depend on the intensity and distribution of selection pressures. This versatility of trade-offs available through gene duplication highlights the importance of large mutation events in adaptation to environmental variation. This impressive adaptability could have a major impact on vector control in Africa.