Abstract
A method for estimating the average level of gene flow among populations is introduced. The method provides an estimate of Nm, where N is the size of each local population in an island model and m is the migration rate. This method depends on knowing the phylogeny of the nonrecombining segments of DNA that are sampled. Given the phylogeny, the geographic location from which each sample is drawn is treated as multistate character with one state for each geographic location. A parsimony criterion applied to the evolution of this character on the phylogeny provides the minimum number of migration events consistent with the phylogeny. Extensive simulations show that the distribution of this minimum number is a simple function of Nm. Assuming the phylogeny is accurately estimated, this method provides an estimate of Nm that is as nearly as accurate as estimates obtained using F(ST) and other statistics when Nm is moderate. Two examples of the use of this method with mitochondrial DNA data are presented.
Full Text
The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (1.1 MB).
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Bermingham E., Avise J. C. Molecular zoogeography of freshwater fishes in the southeastern United States. Genetics. 1986 Aug;113(4):939–965. doi: 10.1093/genetics/113.4.939. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Felsenstein J. Phylogenies from molecular sequences: inference and reliability. Annu Rev Genet. 1988;22:521–565. doi: 10.1146/annurev.ge.22.120188.002513. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Hudson R. R., Kaplan N. L. Statistical properties of the number of recombination events in the history of a sample of DNA sequences. Genetics. 1985 Sep;111(1):147–164. doi: 10.1093/genetics/111.1.147. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Hudson R. R. Properties of a neutral allele model with intragenic recombination. Theor Popul Biol. 1983 Apr;23(2):183–201. doi: 10.1016/0040-5809(83)90013-8. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Slatkin M. Detecting small amounts of gene flow from phylogenies of alleles. Genetics. 1989 Mar;121(3):609–612. doi: 10.1093/genetics/121.3.609. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Smith J. M., Haigh J. The hitch-hiking effect of a favourable gene. Genet Res. 1974 Feb;23(1):23–35. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Takahata N. The coalescent in two partially isolated diffusion populations. Genet Res. 1988 Dec;52(3):213–222. doi: 10.1017/s0016672300027683. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]