Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Volume 280, Issue 1762, Pages -Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2013.0714
Keywords
Galapagos sea lion; major histocompatibility complex; survival; reproductive success; overdominance; sequence divergence
Categories
Funding
- Charles Darwin Research Station
- Max Planck Society
- DFG [LE 2593/1-1, TR105/18]
- Volkswagen Stiftung
- Friends of Galapagos, Schweiz
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It is still debated whether main individual fitness differences in natural populations can be attributed to genome-wide effects or to particular loci of outstanding functional importance such as the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). In a long-term monitoring project on Galapagos sea lions (Zalophus wollebaeki), we collected comprehensive fitness and mating data for a total of 506 individuals. Controlling for genome-wide inbreeding, we find strong associations between the MHC locus and nearly all fitness traits. The effect was mainly attributable to MHC sequence divergence and could be decomposed into contributions of own and maternal genotypes. In consequence, the population seems to have evolved a pool of highly divergent alleles conveying near-optimal MHC divergence even by random mating. Our results demonstrate that a single locus can significantly contribute to fitness in the wild and provide conclusive evidence for the 'divergent allele advantage' hypothesis, a special form of balancing selection with interesting evolutionary implications.
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