Patterns of male sterility in a grasshopper hybrid zone imply accumulation of hybrid incompatibilities without selection.

ABSTRACT: It is now widely accepted that post-zygotic reproductive isolation is the result of negative epistatic interactions between derived alleles fixed independently at different loci in diverging populations (the Dobzhansky-Muller model). What is less clear is the nature of the loci involved and whether the derived alleles increase in frequency through genetic drift, or as a result of natural or sexual selection. If incompatible alleles are fixed by selection, transient polymorphisms will be rare and clines for these alleles will be steep where divergent populations meet. If they evolve by drift, populations are expected to harbour substantial genetic variation in compatibility and alleles will introgress across hybrid zones once they recombine onto a genetic background with which they are comp

SUBMITTER: Shuker DM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1599774 | biostudies-literature | 2005 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature