Maize genetic diversity is largely unstructured by human ethnolinguistic diversity in its center of origin
Samantha J. Snodgrass, Forrest Li, Sowmya Mambakkam, Santiago Gerardo Medina-Muñoz, Luke Sparreo, Mitra Menon, Claudia Pérez, Namrata Kalsi, Amit Gourav Ghosh, Stephan Christoph Schuster, Hie Lim Kim, Andrés Moreno‐Estrada, Daniel E. Runcie, Graham Coop, Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra
The paper quantifies anthropogenic effects on maize genetic diversity in the Americas using genotyping, human genomic data, and linguistic maps, finding weak genome-wide effects but localized language-associated loci.
bioRxiv · Oct 8, 2026 · PreprintEvolutionary Biology