Behavior, demography, and immunogenetic variation: New insights from subterranean rodents

Abstract

Identifying the factors that shape genetic variation is a fundamental goal of evolutionary research (Lewontin 1974; Gillespie 1991; Ford 2002). Although the effects of demography on neutral genetic variation have been characterized for numerous species (reviewed by Endler 1992; Avise 2004), relationships among demography, selection, and variability at functional loci remain largely unstudied (Meyers and Bull 2002). The demographic structure of a population is expected to influence the nature and intensity of selection (Wright 1949) and, hence, determining how demography and selection interact represents a critical step toward understanding genetic structure at functional portions of the genome.