Low concordance of short-term and long-term selection responses in experimental Drosophila populations

Experimental evolution is becoming a popular approach to study the genomic selection response of evolving populations. Computer simulation studies suggest that the accuracy of the signature increases with the duration of the experiment. Since some assumptions of the computer simulations may be violated, it is important to scrutinize the influence of the experimental duration with real data. Here, we use a highly replicated Evolve and Resequence study in Drosophila simulans to compare the selection targets inferred at different time points. At each time point, approximately the same number of SNPs deviates from neutral expectations, but only 10% of the selected haplotype blocks identified from the full data set can be detected after 20 generations. Those haplotype blocks that emerge already after 20 generations differ from the others by being strongly selected at the beginning of the experiment and display a more parallel selection response. Consistent with previous computer simulations, our results demonstrate that only Evolve and Resequence experiments with a sufficient number of generations can characterize complex adaptive architectures.