Reproductive strategies, demography and mutational meltdown

Diala Abu Awad (1) , Sophie Gallina (1) , Cyrille Bonamy (2) , Sylvain Billiard (1)

1 GEPV - Génétique et évolution des populations végétales
2 Université de Lille, Sciences et Technologies

In spite of frequent transitions from strict outcrossing to self-fertilizing in plant populations [1, 2, 3] and the stringent conditions for the maintenance of strictly outcrossing reproductive systems [4, 5], there is a prevalence of outcrossing reproductive strategies in natural populations [6, 7]. It has been proposed that strictly outcrossing species have lower rates of extinction (as observed in phylogenies [1, 2]), due to differences in the accumulation of deleterious mutations leading to population extinction (mutational meltdown [8, 9]). Here we propose a theoretical model to study the joint effects of demography and genetics (the accumulation of deleterious mutations) on population viability for different rates of selffertilization.

Domaines: Calcul parallèle, distribué et partagé [cs.DC]

Diala Abu Awad, Sophie Gallina, Cyrille Bonamy, Sylvain Billiard. Reproductive strategies, demography and mutational meltdown. journées scientifiques mésocentres et France Grilles 2012, Oct 2012, Paris, France. ⟨hal-00766065⟩