An Evaluation of Genetic Distances for Use With Microsatellite Loci

Austin

1995

S. 463-471

Bandaufführung

133859

Mutations of alleles at microsatellite loci tend to result in alleles with repeat scores similar to those
of the alleles from which they were derived. Therefore the difference in repeat score between alleles
carries information about the amount of time that has passed since they shared a common ancestral
allele. This information is ignored by genetic distances based on the infinite alleles model. Here we
develop a genetic distance based on the stepwise mutation model that includes allelic repeat scoreW. e
adapt earlier treatmentso f the stepwise mutation model to show analytically that the expectationof this
distance is a linear function of time. We then use computer simulations to evaluate the overall reliability
of this distance and to compare it with allele sharing and Neięs distance. We find that no distance is
uniformly superior for all purposes, but that for phylogenetic reconstructioofn taxa that are sufficiently
diverged, our new distance ispreferable.