Ethiopian Population Dermatoglyphic Study Reveals Linguistic Stratification of Diversity

The manifestation of ethnic, blood type, & gender-wise population variations regarding Dermatoglyphic manifestations are of interest to assess intra-group diversity and differentiation. The present study reports on the analysis of qualitaive and quantitative finger Dermatoglyphic traits of 382 individuals cross-sectionally sampled from an administrative region of Ethiopia, consisting of five ethnic cohorts from the Afro-Asiatic & Nilo-Saharan affiliations. These Dermatoglyphic parameters were then applied in the assessment of diversity & differentiation, including Heterozygosity, Fixation, Panmixia, Wahlund’s variance, Nei’s measure of genetic diversity, and thumb & finger pattern genotypes, which were inturn used in homology inferences as summarized by a Neighbour-Joining tree constructed from Nei’s standard genetic distance. Results revealed significant correlation between Dermatoglyphics & population parameters that were further found to be in concordance with the historical accounts of the ethnic groups. Such inductions as the ancient north-eastern presence and subsequent admixure events of the Oromos (PII= 15.01), the high diversity of the Amharas (H= 0.1978, F= 0.6453, and P= 0.4144), and the Nilo-Saharan origin of the Berta group (PII= 10.66) are evidences to this. The study has further tested the possibility of applying Dermatoglyphics in population genetic & anthropologic research, highlighting on the prospect of developing a method to trace back population origins & ancient movement patterns. Additionally, linguistic clustering was deemed significant for the Ethiopian population, coinciding with recent genome wide studies that have ascertained that linguistic clustering as to being more crucial than the geographical patterning in the Ethiopian context. Finally, Dermatoglyphic markers have been proven to be endowed with a strong potential as non-invasive preliminary tools applicable prior to genetic studies to analyze ethnically sub-divided populations and also to reveal the stratification mechanism in play.     

The Biological Origin of Linguistic Diversity

In contrast with animal communication systems, diversity is characteristic of almost every aspect of human language. Languages variously employ tones, clicks, or manual signs to signal differences in meaning; some languages lack the noun-verb distinction (e.g., Straits Salish), whereas others have a proliferation of fine-grained syntactic categories (e.g., Tzeltal); and some languages do without morphology (e.g., Mandarin), while others pack a whole sentence into a single word (e.g., Cayuga). A challenge for evolutionary biology is to reconcile the diversity of languages with the high degree of biological uniformity of their speakers. Here, we model processes of language change and geographical dispersion and find a consistent pressure for flexible learning, irrespective of the language being spoken. This pressure arises because flexible learners can best cope with the observed high rates of linguistic change associated with divergent cultural evolution following human migration. Thus, rather than genetic adaptations for specific aspects of language, such as recursion, the coevolution of genes and fast-changing linguistic structure provides the biological basis for linguistic diversity. Only biological adaptations for flexible learning combined with cultural evolution can explain how each child has the potential to learn any human language.     

Dynamical Models Explaining Social Balance and Evolution of Cooperation

Social networks with positive and negative links often split into two antagonistic factions. Examples of such a split abound: revolutionaries versus an old regime, Republicans versus Democrats, Axis versus Allies during the second world war, or the Western versus the Eastern bloc during the Cold War. Although this structure, known as social balance, is well understood, it is not clear how such factions emerge. An earlier model could explain the formation of such factions if reputations were assumed to be symmetric. We show this is not the case for non-symmetric reputations, and propose an alternative model which (almost) always leads to social balance, thereby explaining the tendency of social networks to split into two factions. In addition, the alternative model may lead to cooperation when faced with defectors, contrary to the earlier model. The difference between the two models may be understood in terms of the underlying gossiping mechanism: whereas the earlier model assumed that an individual adjusts his opinion about somebody by gossiping about that person with everybody in the network, we assume instead that the individual gossips with that person about everybody. It turns out that the alternative model is able to lead to cooperative behaviour, unlike the previous model.     

Two Models of Population Growth

Two simple models of the ecology of population growth are described: "exponential" growth with "r -selection," and "logistic" growth, with "K- selection." Various methods for estimating the parameters of these models are presented in detail, along with statistical methods of evaluation and comparison. Also briefly discussed are more complex models of population growth sometimes used by demographers and ecologists. The two simpler models of population growth are then applied, by way of illustration, to two episodes of population growth in protohistoric southwest Iran, dating from 4000–2350 B. C. Interpretation of the results and the implications for future research are then discussed . [population growth, statistical models, exponential growth, logistic growth, early Iran]     

Fission Models of Population Variability

Most models in population genetics are models of allele frequency, making implicit or explicit assumptions of equilibrium or constant population size. In recent papers, we have attempted to develop more appropriate models for the analysis of rare variant data in South American Indian tribes; these are branching process models for the total number of replicates of a variant allele. The spatial distribution of a variant may convey information about its history and characteristics, and this paper extends previous models to take this factor into consideration. A model of fission into subdivisions is superimposed on the previous branching process, and variation between subdivisions is considered. The case where fission is nonrandom and the locations of like alleles are initially positively associated, as would happen were a tribal cluster or village to split on familial lines, is also analyzed. The statistics developed are applied to Yanomama Indian data on rare genetic variants. Due to insufficient time depth, no definitive new inferences can be drawn, but the analysis shows that this model provides results consistent with previous conclusions, and demonstrates the general type of question that may be answered by the approach taken here. In particular, striking confirmation of a higher-than-average growth rate, and hence smaller-than-previously-estimated age, is obtained for the Yan2 serum albumen variant.     

Accounting for Population Structure in Gene-by-Environment Interactions in Genome-Wide Association Studies Using Mixed Models

Although genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have discovered numerous novel genetic variants associated with many complex traits and diseases, those genetic variants typically explain only a small fraction of phenotypic variance. Factors that account for phenotypic variance include environmental factors and gene-by-environment interactions (GEIs). Recently, several studies have conducted genome-wide gene-by-environment association analyses and demonstrated important roles of GEIs in complex traits. One of the main challenges in these association studies is to control effects of population structure that may cause spurious associations. Many studies have analyzed how population structure influences statistics of genetic variants and developed several statistical approaches to correct for population structure. However, the impact of population structure on GEI statistics in GWASs has not been extensively studied and nor have there been methods designed to correct for population structure on GEI statistics. In this paper, we show both analytically and empirically that population structure may cause spurious GEIs and use both simulation and two GWAS datasets to support our finding. We propose a statistical approach based on mixed models to account for population structure on GEI statistics. We find that our approach effectively controls population structure on statistics for GEIs as well as for genetic variants.     

种群数学模型的基本性质

种群数学模型的建立有赖于对生物背景的各种似是而非的假设,然而,在建模过程中,这些假定常常容易得到不当的结合和表达,常常些关于生物背景的清晰而明确的假设被不适当地处理或者甚至被抛开,事实上,即使是某些赫赫有名的种群数学模型也难以完全避免这种缺陷,这一点在我们本文中提及并讨论,要使得所建立的模型在逻辑上可信正确。我们必须确保关于其背景的各种假设得到的始终如一和恰如其分的协调组合。本本文中,我们测试了由Arditi和Michalski在1996年提出的几条建模标准,对于斑块模型,我们在他们的基础上增加了一条模型。我们同时在单种群的其他特殊情形方面的建方面增列了一些重要的标准。按照Arditi和Mchalski的标准以及其他著名的生物建模假定,我们建立了一些有意义的三维捕食－食饵种群模型（比率依赖型）,我们还讨论了种群各种振动现象的建模。     

Population Genetic Models of Genomic Imprinting

The phenomenon of genomic imprinting has recently excited much interest among experimental biologists. The population genetic consequences of imprinting, however, have remained largely unexplored. Several population genetic models are presented and the following conclusions drawn: (i) systems with genomic imprinting need not behave similarly to otherwise identical systems without imprinting; (ii) nevertheless, many of the models investigated can be shown to be formally equivalent to models without imprinting; (iii) consequently, imprinting often cannot be discovered by following allele frequency changes or examining equilibrium values; (iv) the formal equivalences fail to preserve some well known properties. For example, for populations incorporating genomic imprinting, parameter values exist that cause these populations to behave like populations without imprinting, but with heterozygote advantage, even though no such advantage is present in these imprinting populations. We call this last phenomenon "pseudoheterosis." The imprinting systems that fail to be formally equivalent to nonimprinting systems are those in which males and females are not equivalent, i.e., two-sex viability systems and sex-chromosome inactivation.     

Diversity in the Ammonia-Oxidizing Nitrifier Population of a Soil

Multiple genera of ammonia-oxidizing chemoautotrophic nitrifiers in a soil were detected, isolated, and studied by means of modified most-probable-number (MPN) techniques. The soil examined was a Waukegon silt loam treated with ammonium nitrate or sewage effluent. The genera Nitrosomonas and Nitrosospira were found to occur more commonly than the genus Nitrosolobus. Three different MPN media gave approximately the same overall ammonia oxidizer counts within statistical error after prolonged incubation but differed markedly in ratios of Nitrosomonas to Nitrosospira. Selectivity and counting efficiency of MPN media were studied by observing the growth response of representative pure cultures isolated from the soil. Selectivity was evident in each medium with respect to all strains tested, and the media differed greatly in incubation times required to obtain maximum counts.     

Diversity Waves in Collapse-Driven Population Dynamics

Populations of species in ecosystems are often constrained by availability of resources within their environment. In effect this means that a growth of one population, needs to be balanced by comparable reduction in populations of others. In neutral models of biodiversity all populations are assumed to change incrementally due to stochastic births and deaths of individuals. Here we propose and model another redistribution mechanism driven by abrupt and severe reduction in size of the population of a single species freeing up resources for the remaining ones. This mechanism may be relevant e.g. for communities of bacteria, with strain-specific collapses caused e.g. by invading bacteriophages, or for other ecosystems where infectious diseases play an important role. The emergent dynamics of our system is characterized by cyclic ‘‘diversity waves’’ triggered by collapses of globally dominating populations. The population diversity peaks at the beginning of each wave and exponentially decreases afterwards. Species abundances have bimodal time-aggregated distribution with the lower peak formed by populations of recently collapsed or newly introduced species while the upper peak - species that has not yet collapsed in the current wave. In most waves both upper and lower peaks are composed of several smaller peaks. This self-organized hierarchical peak structure has a long-term memory transmitted across several waves. It gives rise to a scale-free tail of the time-aggregated population distribution with a universal exponent of 1.7. We show that diversity wave dynamics is robust with respect to variations in the rules of our model such as diffusion between multiple environments, species-specific growth and extinction rates, and bet-hedging strategies.     

Assessment of Genetic Diversity and Population Genetic Structure of Corylus mandshurica in China Using SSR Markers

Corylus mandshurica, also known as pilose hazelnut, is an economically and ecologically important species in China. In this study, ten polymorphic simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers were applied to evaluate the genetic diversity and population structure of 348 C. mandshurica individuals among 12 populations in China. The SSR markers expressed a relatively high level of genetic diversity (Na = 15.3, Ne = 5.6604, I = 1.8853, Ho = 0.6668, and He = 0.7777). According to the coefficient of genetic differentiation (F _st = 0.1215), genetic variation within the populations (87.85%) were remarkably higher than among populations (12.15%). The average gene flow (Nm = 1.8080) significantly impacts the genetic structure of C. mandshurica populations. The relatively high gene flow (Nm = 1.8080) among wild C. mandshurica may be caused by wind-pollinated flowers, highly nutritious seeds and self-incompatible mating system. The UPGMA (unweighted pair group method of arithmetic averages) dendrogram was divided into two main clusters. Moreover, the results of STRUCTURE analysis suggested that C. mandshurica populations fell into two main clusters. Comparison of the UPGMA dendrogram and the Bayesian STRUCTURE analysis showed general agreement between the population subdivisions and the genetic relationships among populations of C. mandshurica. Group I accessions were located in Northeast China, while Group II accessions were in North China. It is worth noting that a number of genetically similar populations were located in the same geographic region. The results further showed that there was obvious genetic differentiation among populations from Northeast China to North China. Results from the Mantel test showed a weak but still significant positive correlation between Nei’s genetic distance and geographic distance (km) among populations (r = 0.419, P = 0.005), suggesting that genetic differentiation in the 12 C. mandshurica populations might be related to geographic distance. These data provide comprehensive information for the development of conservation strategies of these valuable hazelnut resources.     

Analysis of Genetic Diversity and Population Differentiation of Larix potaninii var. chinensis Using Microsatellite DNA

Larix potaninii var. chinensis is endemic to China and is found only on several peaks of the Qinling Mountains in Shaanxi Province. In China, it is classified in the second class of national protected rare plants. To estimate genetic diversity and to analyze population genetic structure of L. potaninii var. chinensis, 120 individual samples from six natural populations were assessed using seven Larix SSR primer pairs. The results indicate that the level of genetic diversity of L. potaninii var. chinensis is very high, with a mean number of alleles per locus of 4.71. On the other hand, correspondingly low genetic differentiation was found between populations, with an F (ST) value of 0.116, suggesting that more than four-fifths of the genetic variation resides within populations. Besides the influence of habitat heterogeneity and historical distribution, the high level of genetic diversity of L. potaninii var. chinensis is also attributed to its biological characteristics. The definite genetic differentiation among populations, however, is attributed to the effects of genetic drift and natural selection, which are most likely due to the spatial isolation and inclement climate of the species' habitat. This study also revealed evidence that L. potaninii var. chinensis could be endangered, and some conservation strategies are suggested.     

On the Mechanistic Derivation of Various Discrete-Time Population Models

We present a derivation of various discrete-time population models within a single unifying mechanistic context. By systematically varying the within-year patterns of reproduction and aggression between individuals we can derive various discrete-time population models. These models include classical examples such as the Ricker model, the Beverton-Holt model, the Skellam model, the Hassell model, and others. Some of these models until now lacked a good mechanistic interpretation or have been derived in a different context. By using this mechanistic approach, the model parameters can be interpreted in terms of individual behavior.     

Genetic Diversity and Population Structure Analysis in Indian Mustard Germplasm Using Phenotypic Traits and SSR Markers

Plant Molecular Biology Reporter - Indian mustard is an economically important oilseed crop in India; therefore, exploring the genetic diversity of various germplasm collections is quite relevant...     

BC群体不同连锁模式分子区间标记QTL作图相关方法的精确度分析

该文分析了BC群体不同连锁模式分子区间标记QTL作图相关方法的精确度,提出了相应参数的适用范匿,连锁顺序的检测方法,分析步骤,为QTL作图提供了理论基础。