Recent Selective Sweeps in North American Drosophila melanogaster Show Signatures of Soft Sweeps

Adaptation from standing genetic variation or recurrent de novo mutation in large populations should commonly generate soft rather than hard selective sweeps. In contrast to a hard selective sweep, in which a single adaptive haplotype rises to high population frequency, in a soft selective sweep multiple adaptive haplotypes sweep through the population simultaneously, producing distinct patterns of genetic variation in the vicinity of the adaptive site. Current statistical methods were expressly designed to detect hard sweeps and most lack power to detect soft sweeps. This is particularly unfortunate for the study of adaptation in species such as Drosophila melanogaster, where all three confirmed cases of…

• NS
  National Science Foundation

  Award: R01 GM081441
• NI
  National Institutes of Health

  Awards: R01 GM097415, R01 GM100366, R01 GM089926, R01 GM081441, P20 GM103397
• NI
  National Institute of General Medical Sciences

  Awards: P20 GM103397, 8 P20 GM103397-10
• NC
  National Center for Research Resources

  Award: 5P20RR016448-10