Simulating isolated populations to identify emerging genetic structure in the absence of selection

Abstract

Conservation efforts are often informed by measures of genetic structure within or between isolated populations. We have established a simulation approach to investigate how isolated or captive populations can display misleading (i.e recently acquired) genetic structure as a result of genetic drift. We utilized a combination of softwares to generate isolated population genetic datasets that allow interrogation of emerging genetic structure under a range of conditions. We have developed a new statistic, S, to describe the extent of differentiation due to genetic drift between two isolated populations within the clustering software, STRUCTURE. O_LIA novel method to infer the effects of genetic drift on structure among isolated populations C_LI Graphical Abstract O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=186 HEIGHT=200 SRC="FIGDIR/small/853895v1_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1"> View larger version (50K): org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@19eabc7org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1fc4cforg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1b1f947org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@164c916_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_FIG C_FIG SPECIFICATIONS TABLE O_TBL View this table: org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1cdff90org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1455d67org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@f74715org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@5bbc66org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@adfae2_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_TBL C_TBL