On the inference of a southern origin of the North American firefly Photinus pyralis

Abstract

The firefly Photinus pyralis inhabits a wide range of latitudinal and ecological niches, with populations living from temperate to tropical habitats. Its ample geographic distribution makes this species an ideal system for the study of local adaptation and demographic inference of wild populations. Therefore, in this study we modelled and inferred different demographic scenarios for North American populations of P. pyralis, collected from Texas to New Jersey. To do this, we used a combination of ABC techniques (for multi-population/colonization analyses), and likelihood inference (dadi) for single-population demographic inference, which proved useful with our RAD data.We uncovered that the most ancestral North American population lays in Texas, which further colonized the Central region of the US and more recently the North Eastern coast. Our study confidently rejects a demographic scenario where the North Eastern populations colonized more southern populations until reaching Texas. Our results suggest that P. pyralis originated in Central- or South America, followed by migration events that populated northern latitudes. Finally, modelling the demographic history of North American P. pyralis serves as a null model of nucleotide diversity patterns, which will inform future studies of adaptation, not only in P. pyralis, but also in other North American taxa.