Estimating natural selection in population pairs locally adapted to contrasting environments

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Populations adapt genetically to their environments, so populations of the same species in different environments may be genetically distinct. Movement of individuals between populations can challenge this adaptation by constantly reintroducing poorly-adapted genes. This proposal will study adaptation in ducks from low and high altitudes in the Andes Mountains, where highland populations maintain distinctive hemoglobin variants despite some level of mixing with lowland populations. Software will be developed to assess the strength of the pressure to adapt, as well as to measure the rate at which movement of individuals mixes the population gene pools. This will help clarify the amount of mixing a population can sustain before losing its distinctive local adaptations. The software tools created for this project will be made freely available to biologists, and will be useful in applications such as studying the evolution of pesticide resistance, conservation of locally-adapted plant and animal populations, and evolution of drug resistance in pathogens. The proposal includes funding for members of the software development team to visit and interact with software users, insuring that the software will be broadly useful.