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Following the Dynamics of Structural Variants in Experimentally Evolved Populations

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Published on: February 3, 2023

Signatures of selective sweeps in continuous-space populations.

Meera Chotai¹, Xinzhu Wei¹, Philipp W Messer¹

¹Department of Computational Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, United States.

|September 10, 2025

Summary

Spatial population structure impacts selective sweeps by slowing adaptation and altering genetic diversity patterns. Limited dispersal can make sweeps appear softer and increase haplotype heterozygosity, complicating evolutionary inference.

Keywords:

Selective sweep continuous spatial structure haplotype patterns hard and soft sweeps site frequency spectrum

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Area of Science:

Evolutionary genetics
Population genetics
Genomics

Background:

Selective sweeps, where adaptive mutations rapidly increase in frequency, are well-understood in panmictic (random-mating) models.
Natural populations often exhibit spatial structure, with limited dispersal influencing mating patterns and genetic variation.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate how spatial population structure affects the dynamics and observable signatures of selective sweeps.
To simulate selective sweeps in a two-dimensional continuous landscape with varying dispersal rates.

Main Methods:

Simulated selective sweeps in populations on a 2D landscape.
Varied maximum offspring dispersal distance from panmictic to low-dispersal scenarios.
Analyzed genetic diversity, site frequency spectrum, and haplotype heterozygosity around sweep loci.

Main Results:

Low dispersal slows adaptive mutation spread and reduces recombination effectiveness, creating a consistent trough of reduced diversity.
Hard sweeps in low-dispersal populations show an enrichment of intermediate-frequency variants, mimicking soft sweeps.
Haplotype heterozygosity at sweep loci is elevated in low-dispersal scenarios compared to panmictic ones.

Conclusions:

Spatial population structure significantly alters selective sweep signatures, potentially leading to misinterpretation.
Inferences about selective sweeps require careful consideration of population structure and dispersal patterns.
Current models may underestimate the impact of spatial effects on evolutionary dynamics.