The Australian native grasshopper, Phaulacridium vittatum, known as the wingless grasshopper, is a common pest of pastures and crops in Australia, with outbreaks recorded every four or five years. With climate change and the expansion of agricultural land use, there is concern that grasshopper outbreaks could increase in frequency and severity. We used both neutral analysis of landscape genetic resistance combined with detection of selection using Environmental Association Analysis (EAA) to investigate common and disparate environmental drivers of genetic dispersal and local adaptation in this grasshopper pest. With SNP data collected across a 900km gradient, we found that gene flow was best predicted by temperature, with only urban areas and water bodies limiting genetic dispersal. Although there was considerable admixture across the study area, local adaptation was evident and similarly driven by temperature, with additional evidence of morphological adaptation (body size and stripe polymorphism). Gene annotations revealed functions linked to UV shielding, and detoxification processes. Our study indicates that P. vittatum has high potential to adapt to heterogenous environments under high gene flow, and that temperature is the primary driver of both neutral and adaptive genetic structure. Thus, P. vittatum may become a more serious pest in the future as temperatures become warmer, and agricultural land use expands.
Yadav S, Stow AJ, Dudaniec RY. Detection of environmental and morphological adaptation despite high landscape genetic connectivity in a pest grasshopper (Phaulacridium vittatum). Mol Ecol. 2019;28:3395–3412. https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.15146