SOME POPULATION GENETIC CONSEQUENCES OF COLONY FORMATION AND EXTINCTION: GENETIC CORRELATIONS WITHIN FOUNDING GROUPS

Extinction and recolonization in an island model affects genetic differentiation among subpopulations through a combination of sampling and mixing. We investigate the balance of these forces in a general model of population founding that predicts first the genetic variance among new groups and then the effect of these new groups on the total genetic variance among all populations. We allow for a broad range of types of mixing at the time of colonization and demonstrate the significant effects on differentiation from the probability of common origin of gametes (φ). We further demonstrate that kin-structured founding and inbreeding within populations can have a significant effect on the genetic variance among groups and use these results to make predictions about lineal fission and fusion of populations. These results show that population structure is critically affected by non-equilibrium dynamics and that the properties of new populations, especially founding number, probability of common origin, and kin structure, are vital in our understanding of genetic variation.