Department of Biology, University Hill 20014 University of Turku, Turku, Finland ; ARONIA Research and Development Institute at NOVIA University of Applied Sciences and Åbo Akademi University Raseborgsvägen 9, 10600, Ekenäs, Finland.
Department of Biosciences, University of Helsinki PO Box 65(Viikinkaari 1), 00014, Helsinki, Finland.
Ecol Evol. 2015 Jan;5(2):357-67. doi: 10.1002/ece3.1362. Epub 2014 Dec 24.
A heterozygosity-fitness correlations (HFCs) may reflect inbreeding depression, but the extent to which they do so is debated. HFCs are particularly likely to occur after demographic disturbances such as population bottleneck or admixture. We here study HFC in an introduced and isolated ungulate population of white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus in Finland founded in 1934 by four individuals. A total of 422 ≥ 1-year-old white-tailed deer were collected in the 2012 hunting season in southern Finland and genotyped for 14 microsatellite loci. We find significant identity disequilibrium as estimated by g 2. Heterozygosity was positively associated with size- and age-corrected body mass, but not with jaw size or (in males) antler score. Because of the relatively high identity disequilibrium, heterozygosity of the marker panel explained 51% of variation in inbreeding. Inbreeding explained approximately 4% of the variation in body mass and is thus a minor, although significant source of variation in body mass in this population. The study of HFC is attractive for game- and conservation-oriented wildlife management because it presents an affordable and readily used approach for genetic monitoring that allowing identification of fitness costs associated with genetic substructuring in what may seem like a homogeneous population.
杂合度-适合度相关（HFCs）可能反映近交衰退，但它们在多大程度上如此仍存在争议。HFCs 特别可能在人口瓶颈或混合等人口统计干扰后发生。我们在这里研究芬兰于 1934 年由 4 只个体建立的一个引入和隔离的白尾鹿 Odocoileus virginianus 有蹄类动物种群中的 HFC。在 2012 年芬兰南部的狩猎季节共收集了 422 只≥1 岁的白尾鹿，并对 14 个微卫星基因座进行了基因分型。我们发现了显著的身份不平衡，如 g 2 所估计的那样。杂合度与大小和年龄校正后的体重呈正相关，但与颌骨大小或（雄性）鹿角评分无关。由于相对较高的身份不平衡，标记面板的杂合度解释了近交率的 51%。近交解释了体重变化的约 4%，因此是该种群体重变化的一个较小但重要的来源。HFC 的研究对以狩猎和保护为导向的野生动物管理很有吸引力，因为它提供了一种负担得起且易于使用的遗传监测方法，可以识别与遗传亚结构相关的适合度成本，而这些成本在看似同质的种群中可能并不明显。
