title: The distribution of individual inbreeding coefficients and pairwise relatedness in a population of mimulus guttatus
abstract: In order to infer population structure at the individual level, we estimated individual inbreeding coefficients and examined the relationship between geographical distance and genetic relatedness from polymorphic microsatellite data for a population of Mimulus guttatus that has an intermediate selfing rate. Expected heterozygosities for five microsatellites ranged from 0.79 to 0.93. The population inbreeding coefficient was calculated to be 0.19 (SE=0.023). A method-of-moments estimator developed by Ritland (1996b) was used to estimate the distribution of inbreeding among and relatedness between individuals of a natural population. The mean individual inbreeding coefficient (F=0.16) did not differ significantly from the population-level estimate. Most of the individuals appeared to be outbred, and there were very few plants that had estimated inbreeding coefficients greater than one-half. Individuals sampled from one transect showed significantly more inbreeding than individuals sampled along the other (P=0.005). There was no apparent relationship between interplant distance (range: 0-14 m) and mean genetic relatedness between individuals. These results represent the first application of polymorphic microsatellites to estimate fine-scale genetic population structure.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403, USA; Department of Biology, Reed College, Portland, OR 97202, USA.
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sweigart
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Karoly
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Willis