Speciation in the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus): islands of differentiation on the X chromosome and autosomes.

ABSTRACT: Studies of gene flow between closely related taxa can provide insight into the genetic basis of speciation. To evaluate the importance of the X chromosome in reproductive isolation between subspecies of the European rabbit and to study the genomic scale over which islands of differentiation extend, we resequenced a total of 34 loci distributed along the X chromosome and chromosome 14. Previous studies based on few markers suggested that loci in centromeric regions were highly differentiated between rabbit subspecies, whereas loci in telomeric regions were less differentiated. Here, we confirmed this finding but also discovered remarkable variation in levels of differentiation among loci, with F(ST) values from nearly 0 to 1. Analyses using isolation-with-migration models suggest that this

SUBMITTER: Carneiro M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3058625 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature