A Low Genomic Number of Recessive Lethals in Natural Populations of Bluefin Killifish and Zebrafish
Amy R. McCune,1*
Rebecca C. Fuller,2*
Allisan A. Aquilina,1
Robert M. Dawley,3
James M. Fadool,2
David Houle,2
Joseph Travis,2
Alexey S. Kondrashov4
Despite the importance of selection against deleterious
mutations in natural populations, reliable estimates of the genomic numbers of mutant alleles in wild populations are scarce. We found that, in wild-caught bluefin killifish Lucania goodei
(Fundulidae) and wild-caught zebrafish Danio rerio
(Cyprinidae), the average numbers of recessive lethal alleles per
individual are 1.9 (95% confidence limits 1.3 to 2.6) and 1.4 (95%
confidence limits 1.0 to 2.0), respectively. These results, together
with data on several Drosophila species and on Xenopus
laevis, show that phylogenetically distant animals with different
genome sizes and numbers of genes carry similar numbers of lethal
mutations.
1 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary
Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
2 Department of Biological Sciences, Florida State
University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-4340, USA.
3 Department of Biology, Ursinus College, Main
Street, Collegeville, PA 19426-1000, USA.
4 National Center for Biotechnology Information,
National Institutes of Health, 45 Center Drive, Bethesda, MD
20892-6510, USA.
*
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
arm2{at}cornell.edu (A.R.M.) and fuller{at}neuro.fsu.edu (R.C.F.)
These authors contributed equally to this work.
Present address: Department of Biology, Case Western
Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA.
