Microsatellite data show recent demographic expansions in sedentary but not in nomadic human populations in Africa and Eurasia

Abstract

The transition from hunting and gathering to plant and animal domestication was one of the most important cultural and technological revolutions in human history. According to archeologists and paleoanthropologists, this transition triggered major demographic expansions. However, few genetic studies have found traces of Neolithic expansions in the current repartition of genetic polymorphism, pointing rather toward Paleolithic expansions. Here, we used microsatellite autosomal data to investigate the past demographic history of 87 African and Eurasian human populations with contrasted lifestyles (nomadic huntergatherers, semi-nomadic herders and sedentary farmers). Likely due to the combination of a higher mutation rate and the possibility to analyze several loci as independent replicates of the coalescent process, the analysis of microsatellite data allowed us to infer more recent expansions than previous genetic studies, potentially resulting from the Neolithic transition. Despite the variability in their location and environment, we found consistent expansions for all sedentary farmers, while we inferred constant population sizes for all hunter-gatherers and most herders that could result from constraints linked to a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle and/or competition for land between herders and farmers. As an exception, we inferred expansions for Central Asian herders. This might be linked with the arid environment of this area that may have been more favorable to nomadic herders than to sedentary farmers. Alternatively, current Central Asian herders may descent from populations who have first experienced a transition from hunter-gathering to sedentary agropastoralism, and then a second transition to nomadic herding.

Sex‐specific genetic diversity is shaped by cultural factors in Inner Asian human populations

“…We could also observe such a pattern if there was different demographic histories between patrilineal or cognatic populations. Yet, this was ruled out by a previous study (Aim e et al, 2014) showing no growth differences between groups. Note that if there was a difference in the initial male population size between cognatic and patrilineal populations, we would also observe a difference in terms of p, which is not the case here.…”

Genetic and linguistic histories in Central Asia inferred using approximate Bayesian computations

“…We used previously published genetic data from these 21 populations [41], for a total of 643 individuals (24-49 individuals per population; see the electronic supplementary material, table S1), genotyped for 26 autosomal microsatellite makers that showed no significant deviation from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium and extremely low pairwise linkage disequilibrium [39]. All sampled individuals included in our study were no closer than second-degree cousins [39].…”

megasat: automated inference of microsatellite genotypes from sequence data

“…; Aime et al . ). For sibship reconstruction, the relative advantage of microsatellites is essentially infinite, because such analyses require a minimum of four alleles at informative loci (e.g.…”

“…However, these advantages of SNPs are not always realized or relevant when fewer than thousands of loci are required. For a variety of applications including analyses of linkage disequilibrium, association, parentage, kinship, individual identity, population expansions and contractions (bottlenecks) and genetic structure, multi-allelic microsatellites, on a per-locus basis, are 2-209 more powerful than SNPs (Haasl & Payseur 2010;Guichoux et al 2011;Aime et al 2014). For sibship reconstruction, the relative advantage of microsatellites is essentially infinite, because such analyses require a minimum of four alleles at informative loci (e.g.…”