Natural selection constrains neutral diversity across a wide range of species.

ABSTRACT: The neutral theory of molecular evolution predicts that the amount of neutral polymorphisms within a species will increase proportionally with the census population size (Nc). However, this prediction has not been borne out in practice: while the range of Nc spans many orders of magnitude, levels of genetic diversity within species fall in a comparatively narrow range. Although theoretical arguments have invoked the increased efficacy of natural selection in larger populations to explain this discrepancy, few direct empirical tests of this hypothesis have been conducted. In this work, we provide a direct test of this hypothesis using population genomic data from a wide range of taxonomically diverse species. To do this, we relied on the fact that the impact of natural selection on linked n

SUBMITTER: Corbett-Detig RB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4393120 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature