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Reduced microsatellite heterozygosity in island endemics supports the role of long-term effective population size in avian microsatellite diversity.

ABSTRACT: Because of the high mutation rate of microsatellites, polymorphism at microsatellite loci might be predicted to reflect the effective population size over a time span of about 10,000 years and thus to be associated with biogeographic factors impacting species on that time frame. This prediction was tested by comparing heterozygosity at microsatellite loci from 294 bird species, including 58 species endemic to oceanic islands. Controlling statistically for phylogenetic effects, mean heterozygosity was significantly reduced in oceanic island endemics compared to other species. There was also an effect of current endangerment, statistically independent of the effect of island endemicity. These results support the hypothesis that long-term effective population size can be an important causative factor behind differences among species with respect to microsatellite heterozygosity.

SUBMITTER: Hughes AL

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3072815 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Reduced microsatellite heterozygosity in island endemics supports the role of long-term effective population size in avian microsatellite diversity.

Hughes Austin L AL

Genetica 20101120 11-12

Because of the high mutation rate of microsatellites, polymorphism at microsatellite loci might be predicted to reflect the effective population size over a time span of about 10,000 years and thus to be associated with biogeographic factors impacting species on that time frame. This prediction was tested by comparing heterozygosity at microsatellite loci from 294 bird species, including 58 species endemic to oceanic islands. Controlling statistically for phylogenetic effects, mean heterozygosit ...[more]

PMID: 21104002

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Project description:Many oceanic islands harbor diverse species that differ markedly from their mainland relatives with respect to morphology, behavior, and physiology. A particularly common morphological change exhibited by a wide range of species on islands worldwide involves either a reduction in body size, termed island dwarfism, or an increase in body size, termed island gigantism. While numerous instances of dwarfism and gigantism have been well documented, documentation of other morphological changes on islands remains limited. Furthermore, we lack a basic understanding of the physiological mechanisms that underlie these changes, and whether they are convergent. A major hypothesis for the repeated evolution of dwarfism posits selection for smaller, more efficient body sizes in the context of low resource availability. Under this hypothesis, we would expect the physiological mechanisms known to be downregulated in model organisms exhibiting small body sizes due to dietary restriction or artificial selection would also be downregulated in wild species exhibiting dwarfism on islands. We measured body size, relative head size, and circulating blood glucose in three species of reptiles-two snakes and one lizard-in the California Channel Islands relative to mainland populations. Collating data from 6 years of study, we found that relative to mainland population the island populations had smaller body size (i.e., island dwarfism), smaller head sizes relative to body size, and lower levels of blood glucose, although with some variation by sex and year. These findings suggest that the island populations of these three species have independently evolved convergent physiological changes (lower glucose set point) corresponding to convergent changes in morphology that are consistent with a scenario of reduced resource availability and/or changes in prey size on the islands. This provides a powerful system to further investigate ecological, physiological, and genetic variables to elucidate the mechanisms underlying convergent changes in life history on islands.

Project description:BackgroundMicrosatellites are frequently used genetic markers in a wide range of applications, primarily due to their high length polymorphism levels that can easily be genotyped by fragment length analysis. However, the mode of microsatellite evolution is yet not fully understood, and the role of interrupting motifs for the stability of microsatellites remains to be explored in more detail. Here we present a sequence analysis of mutation events and a description of the structure of repeated regions in the hypervariable, pentanucleotide microsatellite locus HrU10 in barn swallows (Hirundo rustica) and tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor).ResultsIn a large-scale parentage analysis in barn swallows and tree swallows, broods were screened for mutations at the HrU10 locus. In 41 cases in the barn swallows and 15 cases in the tree swallows, mutations corresponding to the loss or gain of one or two repeat units were detected. The parent and mutant offspring alleles were sequenced for 33 of these instances (26 in barn swallows and 7 in tree swallows). Replication slippage was considered the most likely mutational process. We tested the hypothesis that HrU10, a microsatellite with a wide allele size range, has an increased probability of introductions of interruptive motifs (IMs) with increasing length of the repeated region. Indeed, the number and length of the IMs was strongly positively correlated with the total length of the microsatellite. However, there was no significant correlation with the length of the longest stretch of perfectly repeated units, indicating a threshold level for the maximum length of perfectly repeated pentanucleotide motifs in stable HrU10 alleles. The combination of sequence and pedigree data revealed that 15 barn swallow mutations (58%) produced alleles that were size homoplasic to other alleles in the data set.ConclusionOur results give further insights into the mode of microsatellite evolution, and support the assumption of increased slippage rate with increased microsatellite length and a stabilizing effect of interrupting motifs for microsatellite regions consisting of perfect repeats. In addition, the observed extent of size homoplasy may impose a general caution against using hypervariable microsatellites in genetic diversity measures when alleles are identified by fragment length analysis only.

Dataset Information

Reduced microsatellite heterozygosity in island endemics supports the role of long-term effective population size in avian microsatellite diversity.

Publications

Reduced microsatellite heterozygosity in island endemics supports the role of long-term effective population size in avian microsatellite diversity.

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