Genetics, Vol. 157, 1673-1682, April 2001, Copyright © 2001
Statistical Approaches to Paternity Analysis in Natural Populations and Applications to the North Atlantic Humpback Whale
Rasmus Nielsena,
David K. Mattilab,
Philip J. Claphamc, and
Per J. Palsbølld
a Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 and Department of Biometrics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853-7801,
b Center for Coastal Studies, Provincetown, Massachusetts 02567,
c Northeast Fisheries Science Center, Woods Hole, Massachusetts 02543
d School of Biological Sciences, University of Wales, Gwynedd LL57 2UW, United Kingdom
Corresponding author:
Rasmus Nielsen, Department of Biometrics, 439 Warren Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-7801., rn28{at}cornell.edu (E-mail)
Communicating editor: M. W. FELDMAN
We present a new method for paternity analysis in natural populations that is based on genotypic data that can take the sampling fraction of putative parents into account. The method allows paternity assignment to be performed in a decision theoretic framework. Simulations are performed to evaluate the utility and robustness of the method and to assess how many loci are necessary for reliable paternity inference. In addition we present a method for testing hypotheses regarding relative reproductive success of different ecologically or behaviorally defined groups as well as a new method for estimating the current population size of males from genotypic data. This method is an extension of the fractional paternity method to the case where only a proportion of all putative fathers have been sampled. It can also be applied to provide abundance estimates of the number of breeding males from genetic data. Throughout, the methods were applied to genotypic data collected from North Atlantic humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) to test if the males that appear dominant during the mating season have a higher reproductive success than the subdominant males.
