Dispersal ghosts in Oceania

Anthropological genetics helps expand our understanding of human phenotypes in the Pacific, in part because of its focus on gene genealogies to infer past episodes of dispersal and to differentiate these events from adaptations due to long-duration directional selection. Sewall Wright's 1949 seminal paper on population structure emphasized that there were two strong forces that exerted systematic and therefore determinant pressure on the gene pool: recurrent immigration and gene flow. These are important topics to all discussions of human dispersal in any region of the world. Furthermore, Wright listed five unique kinds of events that produced indeterminate or unpredictable changes that could lead to phenotypic and genotypic effects. In this category, he placed unique selective incidents, unique hybridization events, unique reductions in number, swamping by mass immigration, and mutational drive due to an allele always being favored since its origin or introduction. This discussion of human dispersal in the Pacific will touch on these topics, since they provide a second level of complexity in knowing who moved about a region of the world found already settled when rediscovered by colonial explorers during the 16-18th centuries.