A theoretical analysis of linkage disequilibrium produced by genetic drift in Drosophila populations
- 1 December 1986
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Hindawi Limited in Genetics Research
- Vol. 48 (3) , 161-166
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s0016672300024952
Abstract
Summary: We analyse the progression of linkage disequilibrium produced by random genetic drift in populations subject to cyclical fluctuations in size. Our model is applied to natural populations of Drosophila which show an annual demographic cycle of bottleneck (finite size) and demographic burst (size supposed to be infinite). In these populations, linkage disequilibrium stabilizes in such a way that, at equilibrium, the expected square of the correlation of gene frequencies E(r2) shows a stable cycle from year to year. If two loci are tightly linked, E(r2) barely varies during the annual cycle. Its values remain close to the value expected in a population of the same but constant effective size. If two loci are loosely linked, fluctuations in E(r2) are large. The maximum value, reached at the end of the bottleneck, is 10 to 100 times greater than the value obtained at the end of the burst. Our results show that the interpretation of observed linkage disequilibrium, by means of statistical tests, requires an accurate knowledge of population demography.This publication has 11 references indexed in Scilit:
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