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THE CONCEPT OF EFFECTIVE RECOMBINATION RATE AND ITS APPLICATION IN SPECIATION THEORY
Author(s) -
Kobayashi Yutaka,
Telschow Arndt
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
evolution
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.84
H-Index - 199
eISSN - 1558-5646
pISSN - 0014-3820
DOI - 10.1111/j.1558-5646.2010.01156.x
Subject(s) - parapatric speciation , assortative mating , biology , sympatric speciation , reproductive isolation , recombination , disruptive selection , evolutionary biology , genetic algorithm , locus (genetics) , gene flow , statistical physics , selection (genetic algorithm) , genetics , mating , genetic variation , natural selection , gene , computer science , physics , population , demography , artificial intelligence , sociology
The goal of this study is to develop a unifying theoretical framework to quantify the strength of reproductive isolation. We propose the use of the “effective recombination rate,” which measures how fast associations of genes are broken by interlocus recombination. Applying the well‐established theory of the effective migration rate, we derive two techniques to investigate the effective recombination rate in models of speciation: the weak migration approximation for parapatric scenarios and the weak recombination approximation for sympatric scenarios. We illustrate the use of these two methods by two examples each: (1) single‐locus genetic incompatibility and (2) two‐locus genetic incompatibility for the first method, and (3) assortative mating and (4) assortative mating combined with disruptive selection for the second method. An advantage of the effective recombination rate over previous approaches is that it integrates gene flow in both directions into a single index measuring the strength of isolation. This enables straightforward comparisons of speciation scenarios with the same or different geographic histories. The method also allows us to evaluate the relative contributions of F2 hybrid deficiency or linkage between multiple barriers in reproductive isolation.