Quantitative genetic variation in an island population of the speckled wood butterfly (Pararge aegeria)

Windig, J.J.; Veerkamp, R.F.; Nylin, Sören

doi:10.1038/sj.hdy.6800522

Cited by 7 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…It is clear that inbreeding depression can occur and can decrease the fitness of wild populations (e.g., Frankham et al 2002;Spielman et al 2004;Reed 2005). At the same time, however, some studies of natural populations have yielded no evidence of inbreeding depression, despite small population size or genetic homogeneity (e.g., Walter 1990;Schneller and Holderegger 1996;Kalinowski et al 1999;Visscher et al 2001;Wu et al 2002;Duarte et al 2003;Wokac 2003;Windig et al 2004). The findings of this study suggest that such negative results are not necessarily due to a lack of statistical power (Kalinowski et al 1999;Keller and Waller 2002;Frankham et al 2002), but rather, may be explainable by the effectiveness of natural selection during inbreeding in nonbenign environments.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Selection and Inbreeding Depression: Effects of Inbreeding Rate and Inbreeding Environment

Swindell

Bouzat

2006

Evolution

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The magnitude of inbreeding depression in small populations may depend on the effectiveness with which natural selection purges deleterious recessive alleles from populations during inbreeding. The effectiveness of this purging process, however, may be influenced by the rate of inbreeding and the environment in which inbreeding occurs. Although some experimental studies have examined these factors individually, no study has examined their joint effect or potential interaction. In the present study, therefore, we performed an experiment in which 180 lineages of Drosophila melanogaster were inbred at slow and fast inbreeding rates within each of three inbreeding environments (benign, high temperature, and competitive). The fitness of all lineages was then measured in a common benign environment. Although slow inbreeding reduced inbreeding depression in lineages inbred under high temperature stress, a similar reduction was not observed with respect to the benign or competitive treatments. Overall, therefore, the effect of inbreeding rate was nonsignificant. The inbreeding environment, in contrast, had a larger and more consistent effect on inbreeding depression. Under both slow and fast rates of inbreeding, inbreeding depression was significantly reduced in lineages inbred in the presence of a competitor D. melanogaster strain. A similar reduction of inbreeding depression occurred in lineages inbred under high temperature stress at a slow inbreeding rate. Overall, our findings show that inbreeding depression is reduced when inbreeding takes place in a stressful environment, possibly due to more effective purging under such conditions.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Selection and Inbreeding Depression: Effects of Inbreeding Rate and Inbreeding Environment

Swindell

Bouzat

2006

Evolution

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“…High heritabilities for wing melanization have been found in Pararge aegeria Berwaerts 2004) and Colias butterflies (Ellers and Boggs 2002). However, low levels of genetic variation were found in an island population of P. aegeria on Madeira; this can be explained by depletion through a recent bottleneck followed by strong selection (Windig et al 2004). Although knowledge about the expression of genetic variation in butterfly wing traits is accumulating, few experimental studies have examined the environmental dependency of this variation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Environmental stress and quantitative genetic variation in butterfly wing characteristics

et al. 2008

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Butterfly wing characteristics are extensively used as model system in studies of development, quantitative genetics and phenotypic plasticity. In spite of its evolutionary relevance, however, the effect of stress on the expression of genetic variation itself has only rarely been studied. In this paper, we explore genetic variation of wing characteristics of the Speckled wood Pararge aegeria along a host plant drought stress gradient. Forewing area, basal and distal degree of melanization and the area of five yellow wing spots were measured. We found an increase in (additive) genetic variation in degree of melanization at higher drought stress, and a similar, yet non-significant, relationship for forewing size. As a result, both the upper limits of the narrow-sense heritability and the coefficient of additive genetic variation of wing size and melanization increased with drought stress. Patterns for the different yellow wing spots were less consistent, suggesting trait-specificity in the relationships between genetic variation and environmental stress.

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“…The existence of natural populations that thrive in spite of severe bottlenecks in their history has also been suggested as evidence that small populations can overcome problems caused by inbreeding and genetic drift through selective elimination of deleterious alleles (Ellegren et al 1993;Hoelzel et al 1993;Visscher 2001;Windig et al 2004;Facon et al 2011). However, these populations might represent only a small fraction of bottlenecked populations, with the majority of them being extinct today.…”

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confidence: 99%

Inbreeding rate modifies the dynamics of genetic load in small populations

Pekkala

Knott

Kotiaho

et al. 2012

Ecology and Evolution

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The negative fitness consequences of close inbreeding are widely recognized, but predicting the long-term effects of inbreeding and genetic drift due to limited population size is not straightforward. As the frequency and homozygosity of recessive deleterious alleles increase, selection can remove (purge) them from a population, reducing the genetic load. At the same time, small population size relaxes selection against mildly harmful mutations, which may lead to accumulation of genetic load. The efficiency of purging and the accumulation of mutations both depend on the rate of inbreeding (i.e., population size) and on the nature of mutations. We studied how increasing levels of inbreeding affect offspring production and extinction in experimental Drosophila littoralis populations replicated in two sizes, N = 10 and N = 40. Offspring production and extinction were measured over 25 generations concurrently with a large control population. In the N = 10 populations, offspring production decreased strongly at low levels of inbreeding, then recovered only to show a consistent subsequent decline, suggesting early expression and purging of recessive highly deleterious alleles and subsequent accumulation of mildly harmful mutations. In the N = 40 populations, offspring production declined only after inbreeding reached higher levels, suggesting that inbreeding and genetic drift pose a smaller threat to population fitness when inbreeding is slow. Our results suggest that highly deleterious alleles can be purged in small populations already at low levels of inbreeding, but that purging does not protect the small populations from eventual genetic deterioration and extinction.

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Quantitative genetic variation in an island population of the speckled wood butterfly (Pararge aegeria)

Cited by 7 publications

References 39 publications

Selection and Inbreeding Depression: Effects of Inbreeding Rate and Inbreeding Environment

Selection and Inbreeding Depression: Effects of Inbreeding Rate and Inbreeding Environment

Environmental stress and quantitative genetic variation in butterfly wing characteristics

Inbreeding rate modifies the dynamics of genetic load in small populations

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