Multiple refugia from penultimate glaciations in East Asia demonstrated by phylogeography and ecological modelling of an insect pest

BACKGROUND: Refugial populations in Quaternary glaciations are critical to understanding the evolutionary history and climatic interactions of many extant species. Compared with the well-studied areas of Europe and Northern America, refugia of species in eastern Asia remain largely unknown. Here, we investigated the phylogeographic history of a globally important insect pest, the oriental fruit moth Grapholita molesta, in its native range of China. RESULTS: Genetic structure analyses unveiled three distinct groups and a set of populations with admixture. Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) analyses support range expansion of this moth from southwest groups of Yunnan and Sichuan to northern and eastern China. A set of admixed populations was found around these two ancestral groups. This pattern of genetic structure points to two refugia located in the Yunnan region and Sichuan Basin. The split of the two refugia was dated to 329.2 thousand years ago in the penultimate glacial period. One of the lineages was exclusively found around the Sichuan Basin, indicating the formation of endemic populations in this refugium. Ecological niche model analysis suggested a shrinking distribution from the LIG period to the MID period in the Sichuan lineage but a wide and stable distribution in the other lineage. CONCLUSIONS: Our results for the first time suggest that Yunnan and Sichuan jointly served as two large-scale refugia in eastern Asia in Quaternary glaciations, helping to maintain genetic diversity overall. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12862-018-1269-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.