Title

An Analysis Of Selection On A Colour Polymorphism In The Northern Leopard Frog

Keywords

Anuran; FDIST2; Genetic structure; ISSR; Microsatellite; Population genetics

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 FST (neutral) = (0.07, 0.35), FST (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. © 2006 The Authors.

Publication Date

8-1-2006

Publication Title

Molecular Ecology

Volume

15

Issue

9

Number of Pages

2627-2641

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-294X.2006.02934.x

Socpus ID

33745899651 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/33745899651

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