Neutral and Selective Processes Drive Population Differentiation for Iris hexagona

Gene flow among widespread populations can be reduced by geographical distance or by divergent selection resulting from local adaptation. In this study, we tested for the divergence of phenotypes and genotypes among 8 populations of Iris hexagona. Using a genotyping-by-sequencing approach, we generated a panel of 750 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and used population genetic analyses to determine what may affect patterns of divergence across I. hexagona populations. Specifically, genetic differentiation was compared between populations at neutral and nonneutral SNPs and detected significant differences between the 2 types of markers. We then asked whether loci with the strongest degree of population genetic differentiation were also the loci with the strongest association to morphology or climate differences, allowing us to test if pollinators or climate drive population differentiation or some combination of both. We found 2 markers that were associated with morphology and 1 marker associated with 2 of the environmental variables, which were also identified in the outlier analysis. We then show that the SNPs putatively under selection were positively correlated with both geographic distance and phenotypic distance, albeit weakly to phenotypic distance. Moreover, neutral SNPs were only correlated with geographic distance and thus isolation-by-distance was observed for neutral SNPs. Our data suggest that both deterministic and neutral processes have contributed to the evolutionary trajectory of I. hexagona populations.