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From: Thomas Gull <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] PubMed abstract: male dominance rarely skews Ychromosome distribution
Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2008 08:50:01 -0400
References: <c51.3958c008.3608f0c1@aol.com><200809241236.m8OCasaX016236@mail.rootsweb.com>
In-Reply-To: <200809241236.m8OCasaX016236@mail.rootsweb.com>
While I'm not a huge proponent of the Genghis Khan / N9H specific conclusions, I think it's a bit of an overstatement that this paper disproves them . In fact, we know that the statement here is probability-based.
In 5 out of 41 sites, they couldn't reject the neutrality hypothesis, and this is probably in areas with recent known history, for the most part. Thus the word "seldom", but not "never". That some patrilineal Y-DNA is dominant over time is obviously true - it's what most of our discussions center around. But I'd extraploate that this study also indirectly supports statements and models that say that most lines go extinct. Failure to expand and dominate is the first step to having your Y-DNA disappear. / Tom
> From:
> To:
> Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:36:38 +0100
> Subject: Re: [DNA] PubMed abstract: male dominance rarely skews Y chromosome distribution
>
> So much for the Genghis Khan and N9H effect...
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From:
> [mailto:] On Behalf Of
> Sent: 22 September 2008 14:00
> To:
> Subject: [DNA] PubMed abstract: male dominance rarely skews Y
> chromosomedistribution
>
> Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2008 Aug 19;105(33):11645-50. Epub 2008 Aug 14.
>
> Male dominance rarely skews the frequency distribution of Y chromosome
> haplotypes in human populations.
>
> Lansing JS, Watkins JC, Hallmark B, Cox MP, Karafet TM, Sudoyo H, Hammer MF.
>
> Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
>
> A central tenet of evolutionary social science holds that behaviors, such as
>
> those associated with social dominance, produce fitness effects that are
> subject to cultural selection. However, evidence for such selection is
> inconclusive
> because it is based on short-term statistical associations between behavior
> and fertility. Here, we show that the evolutionary effects of dominance at
> the
> population level can be detected using noncoding regions of DNA. Highly
> variable polymorphisms on the nonrecombining portion of the Y chromosome can
> be used
> to trace lines of descent from a common male ancestor. Thus, it is possible
> to test for the persistence of differential fertility among patrilines. We
> examine haplotype distributions defined by 12 short tandem repeats in a
> sample of
> 1269 men from 41 Indonesian communities and test for departures from neutral
>
> mutation-drift equilibrium based on the Ewens sampling formula. Our tests
> reject the neutral model in only 5 communities. Analysis and simulations
> show that
> we have sufficient power to detect such departures under varying demographic
>
> conditions, including founder effects, bottlenecks, and migration, and at
> varying levels of social dominance. We conclude that patrilines seldom are
> dominant
> for more than a few generations, and thus traits or behaviors that are
> strictly paternally inherited are unlikely to be under strong cultural
> selection.
>
>
>
>
>
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