Award details

The impact of long-distance dispersal on population genetics

Reference	BB/C507345/1
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor Michael Shaw
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors
Institution	University of Reading
Department	Plant Sciences
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	14,383
Status	Completed
Type	Research Grant
Start date	01/01/2005
End date	31/12/2007
Duration	36 months

Abstract

We will study the effect of long-distance dispersal (LDD), particularly fat-tailed dispersal (FTD) in which the dispersal function has a power-law upper tail, on population genetics. Previous work by one of the investigators has shown that populations in which there is FTD have fractal demography. We will extend this concept to testing the hypotheses that clonal populations have fractal distributions of clones and that sexual populations have fractal distributions of alleles. Research on sexual populations will consider the generation and maintenance of linkage disequilibrium between unlinked loci caused by rare dispersal events when there is FTD. We also predict that there will be correlation between genetic or clonal diversity and geographic distance when there is FTD, unlike the situation when there is exponentially-bounded dispersal (EBD). We will investigate the interaction of LDD and natural selection in determining the rate at which vacant niches are filled. In particular, we will test a prediction arising from extensive data on plant pathogens that, in a patchy environment, FTD allows rapid domination of a population by very few clones. Finally, we will develop robust statistics for characterising genetic differentiation between sub-populations when there is migration between them by FTD, and for summarising the essential features of a population with fractal genetic structure. (Joint with BB/C507302/1).

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Closed Committee - Genes & Developmental Biology (GDB)
Research Topics	X – not assigned to a current Research Topic
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

Associated awards:

BB/C507302/1 The impact of long-distance dispersal on population genetics

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