Among-Locus Variation in Fst: Fish, Allozymes and the Lewontin-Krakauer Test Revisited

Abstract

Abstract Variation among loci in the distribution of allele frequencies among subpopulations is well known; how to tell when the variation exceeds that expected when all loci are subject to uniform evolutionary processes is not well known. If locus-specific effects are important, the ability to detect those effects should vary with the level of gene flow. Populations with low gene flow should exhibit greater variation among loci in Fst than populations with high gene flow, because gene flow acts to homogenize allele frequencies among subpopulations. Here I use Lewontin and Krakauer’s k statistic to describe the variance among allozyme loci in 102 published data sets from fishes. As originally proposed, k ⪢ 2 was considered evidence that the variation in Fst among loci is greater than expected from neutral evolution. Although that interpretation is invalid, large differences in k in different populations suggest that locus-specific forces may be important in shaping genetic diversity. In these data, k is not greater for populations with expected low levels of gene flow than for populations with expected high levels of gene flow. There is thus no evidence that locus-specific forces are of general importance in shaping the distribution of allele frequencies at enzyme loci among populations of fishes.