Premium
Effect of parasitic sex‐ratio distorters on host gene frequencies in a mainland–island context
Author(s) -
KOBAYASHI Y.,
ACHAZ G.,
TELSCHOW A.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of evolutionary biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.289
H-Index - 128
eISSN - 1420-9101
pISSN - 1010-061X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1420-9101.2011.02296.x
Subject(s) - biology , genetic drift , allele , context (archaeology) , genetics , gene flow , population , evolutionary biology , allele frequency , host (biology) , gene , genetic variation , demography , paleontology , sociology
It was previously argued that infection by parasitic sex‐ratio distorters can enhance both random genetic drift and genetic influx from outside the population. However, these two enhancement effects have been studied independently. Here, we study the equilibrium frequencies of alleles (neutral and selected) in a mainland–island scenario where both genetic drift and genetic influx are enhanced due to infection by a cytoplasmic feminizing element. Interestingly, our model reveals that at neutral loci, the two effects almost exactly cancel each other out, such that infection has only a very minor effect on the equilibrium frequency distributions of alleles. At selected loci, in contrast, the two effects are unbalanced and infection has conspicuous effects. Despite the cryptic effects of infection at neutral loci, we demonstrate that temporally spaced data can be used to evaluate the effect of infection on genetic drift and that on gene flow separately.