Recombination and epistasis facilitate introgressive hybridization across reproductively isolated populations: a gamete-based simulation

Authored by Yoshinari Tanaka

Date Published: 2010

Sponsors: Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)

Platforms: No platforms listed

Model Documentation: Other Narrative Mathematical description

Model Code URLs: Model code not found

Abstract

Questions: Why can invasive species sometimes genetically contaminate closely related indigenous species by introgressive hybridization, resisting the post-zygotic isolating mechanism? Flow do recombination rates and epistasis among incompatibility genes, and the number of bet affect the introgression? Features of models: The individual-based model and gamete-based model. which tracks changes in the number of invasive genes per gamete due to selection and recombination by assuming random arrangement of genes within gamete Range of key variables: The recombination rate between adjacent loci ranges from 0 to 0.4 The epistatic effect between loci is measured by the exponent of the geometric function of heterozygosities representing individual fitness It ranges from 1 (additive) to 4 (strong epistasis) The number of loci is set to 2-10 for the gamete-based model Conclusions: Provided that the number of loci is not very small and the fitness of the F1 hybrid is not extremely low, complete genetic replacement by introgressive hybridization is accelerated by an increase in rates of total recombination across all loci and by the epistatic fitness effect among incompatibility loci

Tags

Evolution selection Conservation Model perspective Extinction Gene flow Postzygotic isolation Incompatibilities Monkeyflowers