Models of frequency-dependent selection with mutation from parental alleles

Area of Science:

• Evolutionary biology
• Population genetics

Background:

• Frequency-dependent selection (FDS) is a key mechanism for maintaining genetic variation in populations.
• The pairwise-interaction model (PIM) is a common theoretical framework for FDS, often studied with recurrent mutation.
• Previous models overlooked the influence of new mutation fitness effect distributions on polymorphism.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of mutation models on allele number and frequency distributions under FDS.
• To explore how fitness effects of new mutations, derived from parental alleles, affect population polymorphism.
• To compare different methods of generating mutant fitnesses within the PIM framework.

Main Methods:

• Simulated population dynamics under the pairwise-interaction model (PIM).
• Incorporated mutation where new alleles' fitness is related to their parental allele's fitness.
• Analyzed the number and distribution of alleles and their fitness effects.

Main Results:

• Generating mutants from existing alleles reduces the average number of alleles compared to previous models.
• This mutation model leads to highly stable polymorphisms.
• The resulting allele-frequency distributions are more realistic.

Conclusions:

• The method of generating new mutations significantly impacts FDS outcomes.
• Parental-allele-based mutation models produce stable genetic polymorphisms with realistic allele frequencies.
• This refined modeling approach offers a more nuanced understanding of genetic variation maintenance.