State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
J Hered. 2011 Sep-Oct;102(5):554-61. doi: 10.1093/jhered/esr069. Epub 2011 Jul 21.
Social behavior can shape the local population genetic structure of mammals. Group living can increase pairwise genetic relatedness of mammals at a local level but differentiate the genetic structure at a population level through offspring philopatry and nonrandom mating. Our study aimed to test the hypothesis that social groups of Mongolian gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus) would consist of genetically related individuals due to offspring philopatry and would have distinct genetic structures because of restricted gene flow among social groups and nonrandom mating. We genotyped 327 wild gerbils, live captured from 28 social groups in Inner Mongolia, China, using nine microsatellite loci. The within-group pairwise genetic relatedness coefficient averaged 0.28 ± 0.14 (standard deviation), whereas the average pairwise genetic relatedness coefficient of the whole gerbil population was 0.0 ± 0.2. Additionally, the value of the global F statistic (F(st)) was 0.21, suggesting a substantial genetic differentiation among social groups of Mongolian gerbils. The Bayesian clustering divided the 327 gerbils into 23 distinct genetic clusters. Therefore, our results show that high within-group genetic relatedness and among-group genetic differentiation are the genetic consequences of group living in social mammals because of restricted gene flow, female philopatry, and nonrandom mating within social groups.
社会行为可以塑造哺乳动物的局部种群遗传结构。群体生活可以增加哺乳动物在局部水平上的成对遗传相关性，但通过后代的亲缘关系和非随机交配来区分种群水平上的遗传结构。我们的研究旨在检验以下假设：蒙古沙鼠（Meriones unguiculatus）的社会群体由于后代的亲缘关系而由遗传上相关的个体组成，并且由于社会群体之间的基因流动受限和非随机交配，它们具有独特的遗传结构。我们使用 9 个微卫星基因座对来自中国内蒙古 28 个社会群体的 327 只野生沙鼠进行了基因型分析。群体内的成对遗传相关系数平均值为 0.28 ± 0.14（标准差），而整个沙鼠种群的平均成对遗传相关系数为 0.0 ± 0.2。此外，全局 F 统计量（F(st)）的值为 0.21，表明蒙古沙鼠社会群体之间存在大量的遗传分化。贝叶斯聚类将 327 只沙鼠分为 23 个不同的遗传群。因此，我们的研究结果表明，高的群体内遗传相关性和群体间遗传分化是由于社会哺乳动物的基因流动受限、雌性亲缘关系和社会群体内的非随机交配导致的。
