Meeting Abstract
Life in a desert environment imposes harsh selection pressures on those who inhabit it. Modifications to decrease water loss, increase thermoregulatory capacity, and otherwise thrive in these environments have been well documented in many desert specialists, but how do these modifications extend to generalists recently introduced to a desert environment? House mice, Mus musculus domesticus, have been present in the Americas since western colonization and have been shown to exhibit variation associated with environmental differences. Of particular interest is the way in which populations of mice living in the Sonoran desert have responded to desert conditions over this short time scale. Here, we show mice living in these populations show decreased need or preference for water compared with populations found throughout other biomes in the Americas. We subsequently search for genomic signals of selection associated with desert living in these populations. We demonstrate that Sonoran desert house mice exhibit unique adaptations associated with the decreased water access of their desert environment.
