Linkage disequilibrium in Bougainville Island

Linkage disequilibria are estimated for three 2-locus systems in 18 samples from Bougainville Island, Solomon Islands. The systems are haptoglobin, acid phosphatase and MN blood group. The disequilibria are estimated two ways: by maximum likelihood (ML) and by the covariance between the non-alleles. Though seven of the 52 ML estimates are statistically different than zero, none of the covariance estimates are significant. We conclude that because linkage disequilibrium for loosely linked loci is a small quantity and because the sample sizes for most populations studied by anthropologists are small, linkage disequilibrium will not be a useful parameter for the study of natural selection in these populations.