Recombination and speciation: loci near centromeres are more differentiated than loci near telomeres between subspecies of the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus).

ABSTRACT: Recent empirical and theoretical studies suggest that regions of restricted recombination play an important role in the formation of new species. To test this idea, we studied nucleotide variation in two parapatric subspecies of the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus). We surveyed five loci near centromeres, where recombination is expected to be suppressed, and five loci near telomeres, where recombination is expected to be higher. We analyzed this multilocus data set using a divergence-with-gene flow framework and we report three main findings. First, we estimated that these subspecies diverged approximately 1.8 MYA and maintained large effective population sizes (O. c. algirus N(e) approximately 1,600,000 and O. c. cuniculus N(e) approximately 780,000). Second, we rejected a strict a

SUBMITTER: Carneiro M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2644949 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature