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The impact of long-distance dispersal on population genetics

Reference	BBS/E/J/0000A206
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor James Brown
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors
Institution	John Innes Centre
Department	John Innes Centre Department
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	93,242
Status	Completed
Type	Institute Project
Start date	01/04/2005
End date	31/03/2008
Duration	36 months

Abstract

We will study the effect of long-distance dispersal (LDD) on population genetics when there is fat-tailed dispersal (FTD), in which the probability density of dispersal distances has a power-law upper tail. Previous work by one of the investigators has shown that populations in which there is FTD have complex demography which may be fractal with no characteristic spatial scale. We will extend this concept to testing the hypotheses that asexual 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 exceptional dispersal events. We also predict that there will be correlation between genetic or clonal diversity and geographic distance when there is FTD but not 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 and generates large, persistent linkage disequilibrium. Finally, we will develop robust statistics for characterising genetic differentiation between sub-populations when there is FTD between them, and for summarising the essential features of a population with fractal genetic structure.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Closed Committee - Plant & Microbial Sciences (PMS)
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

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