The determinants of genetic diversity in butterflies
Alexander Mackintosh (),
Dominik R. Laetsch,
Alexander Hayward,
Brian Charlesworth,
Martin Waterfall,
Roger Vila and
Konrad Lohse ()
Additional contact information
Alexander Mackintosh: University of Edinburgh
Dominik R. Laetsch: University of Edinburgh
Alexander Hayward: University of Exeter
Brian Charlesworth: University of Edinburgh
Martin Waterfall: University of Edinburgh
Roger Vila: Institut de Biologia Evolutiva (CSIC Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Konrad Lohse: University of Edinburgh
Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-9
Abstract:
Abstract Under the neutral theory, genetic diversity is expected to increase with population size. While comparative analyses have consistently failed to find strong relationships between census population size and genetic diversity, a recent study across animals identified a strong correlation between propagule size and genetic diversity, suggesting that r-strategists that produce many small offspring, have greater long-term population sizes. Here we compare genome-wide genetic diversity across 38 species of European butterflies (Papilionoidea), a group that shows little variation in reproductive strategy. We show that genetic diversity across butterflies varies over an order of magnitude and that this variation cannot be explained by differences in current abundance, propagule size, host or geographic range. Instead, neutral genetic diversity is negatively correlated with body size and positively with the length of the genetic map. This suggests that genetic diversity is determined both by differences in long-term population size and the effect of selection on linked sites.
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11308-4 Abstract (text/html)
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-11308-4
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-11308-4
Access Statistics for this article
Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie
More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().