Genetic diversity and population history of golden monkeys (Rhinopithecus roxellana).
Golden monkey (Rhinopithecus roxellana), namely the snub-nosed monkey, is a well-known endangered primate, which distributes only in the central part of mainland China. As an effort to understand the current genetic status as well as population history of this species, we collected a sample of 32 individuals from four different regions, which cover the major habitat of this species. Forty-four allozyme loci were surveyed in our study by allozyme electrophoresis, none of which was found to be polymorphic. The void of polymorphism compared with that of other nonhuman primates is surprising particularly considering that the current population size is many times larger than that of some other endangered species. Since many independent loci are surveyed in this study, the most plausible explanation for our observation is that the population has experienced a recent bottleneck. We used a coalescent approach to explore various scenarios of population bottleneck and concluded that the most recent bottleneck could have happened within the last 15,000 years. Moreover, the proposed simulation approach could be useful to researchers who need to analyze the non- or low-polymorphism data.
Laboratory of Molecular Evolution and Genome Diversity, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Science, Kunming 650223, China.
Haipeng
H
Li
Shi-Jie
SJ
Meng
Zheng-Ming
ZM
Men
Yun-Xin
YX
Fu
Ya-Ping
YP
Zhang
D000818:Animals; D002681:China; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D014644:Genetic Variation; D005828:Genetics, Population; D000882:Haplorhini / Q000235:genetics*; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D008957:Models, Genetic; D010802:Phylogeny