Using neutral cline decay to estimate contemporary dispersal: a generic tool and its application to a major crop pathogen

Ecol Lett. 2013 Jun;16(6):721-30. doi: 10.1111/ele.12090. Epub 2013 Mar 20.

Abstract

Dispersal is a key parameter of adaptation, invasion and persistence. Yet standard population genetics inference methods hardly distinguish it from drift and many species cannot be studied by direct mark-recapture methods. Here, we introduce a method using rates of change in cline shapes for neutral markers to estimate contemporary dispersal. We apply it to the devastating banana pest Mycosphaerella fijiensis, a wind-dispersed fungus for which a secondary contact zone had previously been detected using landscape genetics tools. By tracking the spatio-temporal frequency change of 15 microsatellite markers, we find that σ, the standard deviation of parent-offspring dispersal distances, is 1.2 km/generation(1/2) . The analysis is further shown robust to a large range of dispersal kernels. We conclude that combining landscape genetics approaches to detect breaks in allelic frequencies with analyses of changes in neutral genetic clines offers a powerful way to obtain ecologically relevant estimates of dispersal in many species.

Publication types

  • Letter
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Ascomycota / genetics
  • Ascomycota / pathogenicity*
  • Ascomycota / physiology*
  • Cameroon
  • Computer Simulation
  • Gene Frequency
  • Genetics, Population*
  • Likelihood Functions
  • Microsatellite Repeats
  • Models, Biological*
  • Musa / microbiology*
  • Plant Diseases / microbiology