Global invasion history of the agricultural pest butterfly pieris rapae revealed with genomics and citizen science

• Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
• Main Authors: Ryan, Sean F., Lombaert, Eric, Espeset, Anne, Vila, Roger, Talavera, Gerard, Dinca, Vlad, Doellman, Meredith M., Renshaw, Mark A., Eng, Matthew W., Hornett, Emily A., Li, Yiyuan, Pfrender, Michael E., Shoemaker, Dewayne
• Other Authors: University of Tennessee, Ecological and Biological Sciences Practice, Partenaires INRAE, Institut Sophia Agrobiotech (ISA), Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA)-Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (1965 - 2019) (UNS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), University of Nevada, Institut Cavanilles de Biodiverstitat i Biologia Evolutiva, Harvard University, University of Oulu, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Notre Dame Indiana (UND), Hawaii Pacific University, University of Liverpool, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM), University of Notre Dame, US Department of Agriculture-National Institute of Food and Agriculture Postdoctoral Fellowship 2017-67012-26999, National Science FoundationNational Science Foundation (NSF) NSF-1447692, Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigacion CGL2016-76322-P, European UnionEuropean Union (EU); Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad Programme IJCI-2016-29083, National Geographic SocietyNational Geographic Society WW1-300R-18, Marie Curie Actions International Outgoing FellowshipEuropean Union (EU) 330136
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2019
• Subjects: invasive; citizen science; approximate Bayesian computation; agricultural pest; genomics; [SDV]Life Sciences [q-bio]; [SDE]Environmental Sciences; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-02625862; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1907492116

International audience The small cabbage white butterfly, Pieris rapae, is a major agricultural pest of cruciferous crops and has been introduced to every continent except South America and Antarctica as a result of human activities. In an effort to reconstruct the near-global invasion history of P. rapae, we developed a citizen science project, the "Pieris Project," and successfully amassed thousands of specimens from 32 countries worldwide. We then generated and analyzed nuclear (double-digest restriction site-associated DNA fragment procedure [ddRAD]) and mitochondrial DNA sequence data for these samples to reconstruct and compare different global invasion history scenarios. Our results bolster historical accounts of the global spread and timing of P. rapae introductions. We provide molecular evidence supporting the hypothesis that the ongoing divergence of the European and Asian subspecies of P. rapae (similar to 1,200 y B.P.) coincides with the diversification of brassicaceous crops and the development of human trade routes such as the Silk Route (Silk Road). The further spread of P. rapae over the last similar to 160 y was facilitated by human movement and trade, resulting in an almost linear series of at least 4 founding events, with each introduced population going through a severe bottleneck and serving as the source for the next introduction. Management efforts of this agricultural pest may need to consider the current existence of multiple genetically distinct populations. Finally, the international success of the Pieris Project demonstrates the power of the public to aid scientists in collections-based research addressing important questions in invasion biology, and in ecology and evolutionary biology more broadly.