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The increase in genetic distance between marine individuals or populations with increasing distance has often been assumed to be influenced by dispersal distance. In turn, dispersal distance has often been assumed to correlate strongly with pelagic larval duration (PLD). We examined the consistency of these assumptions in species with long planktonic durations. Reviewing multiple marine species, Selkoe & Toonen (2011; Mar Ecol Prog Ser 436:291-305) demonstrated significant fit of a species’ PLD with metrics of genetic distance between sampling sites. However, for long dispersers (PLD >10 d) whose dispersal is more influenced by ocean currents, the fit of PLD and genetic connectivity metrics was not significant. We tested if using realistic ocean currents to determine simulated dispersal distances would produce an improved proxy for larval dispersal that correlates more strongly with genetic connectivity metrics. We estimated the dispersal distance of propagules for locations in the genetic studies compiled by Selkoe and Toonen with a global ocean model (Mercator, 1/12° resolution). The model-derived estimates of dispersal distance did not correlate better than PLD against the genetic diversity metrics globalFSTkm-1and isolation-by-distance (IBD) slope. We explored 2 explanations: (1) our ocean circulation-based dispersal distance estimates are too simple to produce biologically meaningful improvement over PLD, and (2) IBD slope is not a powerful predictor of variation in dispersal distance between species with long PLD. Exploring these explanations suggests directions for future research which will enable better quantitative understanding of genetic diversity and its spatial distribution in coastal marine organisms.
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Isolation by distance in populations with power-law dispersal
Abstract Limited dispersal of individuals between generations results in isolation by distance, in which individuals further apart in space tend to be less related. Classic models of isolation by distance assume that dispersal distances are drawn from a thin-tailed distribution and predict that the proportion of the genome that is identical by descent between a pair of individuals should decrease exponentially with the spatial separation between them. However, in many natural populations, individuals occasionally disperse over very long distances. In this work, we use mathematical analysis and coalescent simulations to study the effect of long-range (power-law) dispersal on patterns of isolation by distance. We find that it leads to power-law decay of identity-by-descent at large distances with the same exponent as dispersal. We also find that broad power-law dispersal produces another, shallow power-law decay of identity-by-descent at short distances. These results suggest that the distribution of long-range dispersal events could be estimated from sequencing large population samples taken from a wide range of spatial scales.
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- PAR ID:
- 10408675
- Editor(s):
- Ross-Ibarra, J
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- G3 Genes|Genomes|Genetics
- Volume:
- 13
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 2160-1836
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1093/g3journal/jkad023
