Genetics, Vol 142, 619-627, Copyright © 1996

INVESTIGATIONS

Estimating Long-Term Mating Systems Using DNA Sequences

B. G. Milligan
Department of Biology, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico 88003

Plant mating systems often involve a mixture of self fertilizations and outcross fertilizations. The degree of selfing has a large impact on the genetic composition of natural populations and on the evolution of the mating system itself in response to such factors as inbreeding depression. This paper describes a means of estimating the long-term rate of self-fertilization from samples of alleles taken from individuals in a population. Use is made of the genealogy of pairs of alleles at a locus within individuals and pairs between individuals. The degree of selfing is closely related to the extent to which the number of nucleotide sites differing within an individual is reduced relative to the number differing between individuals. Importantly, the estimate of long-term selfing is largely independent of population size and is not affected by historical fluctuations in population size; instead it responds directly to the mating system itself. The approach outlined here is most appropriate to evolutionary problems in which the long-term nature of the mating system is of interest, such as to determine the relationship between prior inbreeding and inbreeding depression.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				J. Li and H.-W. Deng Estimation of Parameters of Deleterious Mutations in Partial Selfing or Partial Outcrossing Populations and in Nonequilibrium Populations Genetics, April 1, 2000; 154(4): 1893 - 1906. [Abstract] [Full Text]

				M. Nordborg Linkage Disequilibrium, Gene Trees and Selfing: An Ancestral Recombination Graph With Partial Self-Fertilization Genetics, February 1, 2000; 154(2): 923 - 929. [Abstract] [Full Text]