Gyllenhaal Ethan F, Andersen Michael J, Moyle Robert G, Manthey Joseph D
Department of Biological Sciences, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA.
Department of Biology and Museum of Southwestern Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA.
Biol Lett. 2025 Mar;21(3):20240692. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2024.0692. Epub 2025 Mar 5.
Islands have long represented natural laboratories for studying many aspects of ecology and evolutionary biology, from speciation to community assembly. One aspect that has been well documented is the correlation between island size and taxonomic diversity, likely due to decreased complexity and population size on small islands. This same logic can apply to genetic diversity, which should predictably decrease with effective population size. The island size-diversity correlation has received support over the years but often focuses on single metrics of genetic diversity. Here, we use white-eyes in the Solomon Islands to study the correlation between island size and various metrics related to genetic diversity, including runs of homozygosity and fixation of transposable elements. We find that almost all these metrics strongly correlate with island size, and in turn with each other. We infer that island size is independently correlated with these different variables, demonstrating that population size impacts genomic metrics of diversity in a variety of ways across temporal and hierarchical scales.
长期以来，岛屿一直是研究生态学和进化生物学诸多方面的天然实验室，从物种形成到群落组装皆是如此。一个有充分文献记载的方面是岛屿大小与分类多样性之间的相关性，这可能是由于小岛上的复杂性和种群规模降低所致。同样的逻辑也适用于遗传多样性，遗传多样性预计会随着有效种群规模的减小而降低。多年来，岛屿大小与多样性的相关性得到了支持，但往往侧重于遗传多样性的单一指标。在这里，我们利用所罗门群岛的白眼鸟来研究岛屿大小与各种与遗传多样性相关的指标之间的相关性，包括纯合子片段和转座元件的固定。我们发现，几乎所有这些指标都与岛屿大小密切相关，进而彼此相关。我们推断岛屿大小与这些不同变量独立相关，这表明种群规模在时间和层次尺度上以多种方式影响多样性的基因组指标。
