Title

An analysis of selection on a colour polymorphism in the northern leopard frog

Authors

Authors

E. A. Hoffman; F. W. Schueler; A. G. Jones;M. S. Blouin

Comments

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Abbreviated Journal Title

Mol. Ecol.

Keywords

anuran; FDIST2; genetic structure; ISSR; microsatellite; population; genetics; QUANTITATIVE GENETIC-VARIATION; EFFECTIVE POPULATION-SIZE; RANA-PIPIENS; NATURAL-SELECTION; F-STATISTICS; FLOW; LOCI; DAMSELFLIES; DIVERGENCE; FREQUENCY; Biochemistry & Molecular Biology; Ecology; Evolutionary Biology

Abstract

In this study, we investigated the role of selection in the maintenance of a dorsal colour polymorphism in natural populations of the northern leopard frog, Rana pipiens. We determined genetic structure both spatially and temporally from a suite of putatively neutral molecular markers and tested whether or not the colour locus exhibited patterns of genetic variation that differed from those of the neutral loci. Spatial genetic structure at the colour locus was indistinguishable from structure at neutral loci [95% confidence intervals of F-ST (neutral) = (0.07, 0.35), F-ST (colour locus) = 0.114]. In the temporal analysis, we found that the variance among populations in the change in allele frequency at the colour locus (equal to 0.004) lies within the 95% confidence intervals for the variance among populations in changes in allele frequencies at neutral loci. In light of our inability to show evidence for the selective maintenance of the colour polymorphism, we used computer simulations to infer the power of our spatial and temporal techniques to detect selection. The computer simulations showed that although the strength of selection (s) would need to be relatively strong to have been detected by the temporal approach (s = 0.1-0.4, depending on the model tested), the spatial analysis would have detected all but weak selection (s = 0.01-0.04, depending on the model tested). This study illustrates the importance of using a locus comparison approach to detect evidence for selective maintenance before conducting studies to measure the selective mechanisms maintaining a polymorphism.

Journal Title

Molecular Ecology

Volume

15

Issue/Number

9

Publication Date

1-1-2006

Document Type

Article

Language

English

First Page

2627

Last Page

2641

WOS Identifier

WOS:000239010000026

ISSN

0962-1083

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