Adaptive tracking contributes to the invasion success of a global pest insect

Adaptive tracking drives predictable, rapid evolution of critical thermal minimum in the globally invasive fly Drosophila suzukii, enabling coping with climate variability.

• Why it matters: Predicting which species become successful invaders requires understanding how introduced populations adapt to novel seasonal environments in their new range.
• What they did: The study tests adaptive tracking in Drosophila suzukii by measuring rapid shifts in critical thermal minimum and identifying genomic regions enriched for seasonally fluctuating alleles.
• The result: Seasonally fluctuating alleles map to loci tied to thermal tolerance, pesticide resistance, and olfactory behavior, and tracking loci are significantly enriched for invasion-associated alleles in North American populations.

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