On the correlation between heterozygosity and fitness in natural populations
Author
Summary, in English
Three primary hypotheses currently prevail for correlations between heterozygosity at a set of molecular markers and fitness in natural populations. First, multilocus heterozygosity- fitness correlations might result from selection acting directly on the scored loci, such as at particular allozyme loci. Second, significant levels of linkage disequilibrium, as in recently bottlenecked-and-expanded populations, might cause associations between the markers and fitness loci in the local chromosomal vicinity. Third, in partially inbred populations, heterozygosity at the markers might reflect variation in the inbreeding coefficient and might associate with fitness as a result of effects of homozygosity at genome-wide distributed loci. Despite years of research, the relative importance of these hypotheses remains unclear. The screening of heterozygosity at polymorphic DNA markers offers an opportunity to resolve this issue, and relevant empirical studies have now emerged. We provide an account of the recent progress on the subject, and give suggestions on how to distinguish between the three hypotheses in future studies.
Department/s
Publishing year
2002
Language
English
Pages
2467-2474
Publication/Series
Molecular Ecology
Volume
11
Issue
12
Links
Document type
Journal article review
Publisher
Wiley-Blackwell
Topic
- Biological Sciences
Status
Published
Research group
- Molecular Ecology and Evolution Lab
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 0962-1083