Negative frequency dependent selection contributes to the maintenance of a global polymorphism in mitochondrial DNA.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Understanding the forces that maintain diversity across a range of scales is at the very heart of biology. Frequency-dependent processes are generally recognized as the most central process for the maintenance of ecological diversity. The same is, however, not generally true for genetic diversity. Negative frequency dependent selection, where rare genotypes have an advantage, is often regarded as a relatively weak force in maintaining genetic variation in life history traits because recombination disassociates alleles across many genes. Yet, many regions of the genome show low rates of recombination and genetic variation in such regions (i.e., supergenes) may in theory be upheld by frequency dependent selection.

Results

We studied what is essentially a ubiquitous

SUBMITTER: Kurbalija Novicic Z 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7001298 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature