Hey, here's the follow-up, but better to go here and see the charts better...
hxxp://anthro.palomar.edu/synthetic/synth_8.htm
Non-Random Mating
In all human populations, people usually select mates non-randomly for traits that are easily observable. Cultural values and social rules primarily guide mate selection. Most commonly, mating is with similar people in respect to traits such as skin color, stature, and personality. Animal breeders do essentially the same thing when they intentionally try to improve varieties or create new ones by carefully making sure that mating is not random. When they select mates for their animals based on desired traits, farmers hope to increase the frequency of those traits in future generations. In so far as the discriminated traits are genetically inherited, evolution is usually a consequence. However, the results are not always what farmers expect. The reasons why will be explained shortly.
Even without the intervention of farmers, most animals select mates carefully--they do not mate randomly. Charles Darwin noted this fact in his 1871 book Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. He suggested that mate selection is a powerful force of evolution similar in its effect to natural selection. This idea was widely rejected in Darwin's time, but later research showed that he was correct.
Why Animals Mate Non-randomly: Tale of the Peacock
video clip from PBS 2001 series Evolution
requires RealPlayer to view (length = 4 mins, 2 secs)
In order to understand the effect of non-random mating patterns, it is useful to first examine the results of random mating. As Hardy and Weinberg demonstrated in the early 20th century, the gene pool of a population that is mating randomly and is not subject to any other evolutionary process will not change--it will remain in equilibrium. If mating is entirely random, there will be nine possible mating patterns for a trait that is controlled by two alleles (A and a).
AA X AA Aa X AA aa X AA
AA X Aa Aa X Aa aa X Aa
AA X aa Aa X aa aa X aa
In a population which has 50% of each of these two alleles, the expected offspring genotype frequencies with random mating will be 25% homozygous dominant (AA), 25% homozygous recessive (aa), and 50% heterozygous (Aa), as shown in the table below. They will remain in this ratio every generation that random mating continues and no other evolutionary mechanism is operating.
Random Mating
Possible parent
mating patterns Expected offspring genotypes
AA Aa aa
AA X AA
4
AA X Aa 2 2
AA X aa 4
Aa X AA 2 2
Aa X Aa 1 2 1
Aa X aa 2 2
aa X AA
4
aa X Aa 2 2
aa X aa 4
Total 9
( 25% ) 18
( 50% )
9
( 25% )
The number of children
are what would be
expected by chance
if each mating pair has
4 children.
You can work this out
yourself by creating a
Punnett Square for
each set of parents.
Positive Assortative Mating
The most common non-random mating pattern among humans is one in which individuals mate with others who are like themselves phenotypically for selected traits. This is referred to as positive assortative mating . The term "assortative" refers to classifying and selecting characteristics. An example of positive assortative selection would be tall slender people mating only with tall slender people. Taken to the extreme, positive assortative mating results in only three possible mating patterns with respect to genotypes for traits that are controlled by two autosomal alleles--homozygous dominant with homozygous dominant (AA X AA), heterozygous with heterozygous (Aa X Aa), and homozygous recessive with homozygous recessive (aa X aa).
The net effect of positive assortative mating is a progressive increase in the number of homozygous genotypes (AA and aa) and a corresponding decrease in the number of heterozygous (Aa) ones in a population, as shown in the table below. Each generation that there is positive assortative mating, this polarizing trend will continue in the population.
Positive Assortative Mating
Possible parent
mating patterns Expected offspring genotypes
AA Aa aa
AA X AA
4
Aa X Aa 1 2 1
aa X aa 4
Total 5
( 42% ) 2
( 17% )
5
( 42% )
Negative Assortative Mating
The least common non-random mating pattern among humans is one in which people only select mates who are phenotypically different from themselves for selective traits. This is referred to as negative assortative mating . It would occur, for instance, if people who have the Rh negative blood type only mate with those who are Rh positive.
In terms of genotypes, there are six possible negative assortative mating patterns for traits that are controlled by two autosomal alleles, as shown in the table below. The net effect is a progressive increase in the frequency of heterozygous genotypes (Aa) and a corresponding decrease in homozygous (AA and aa) ones in a population. In other words, negative assortative mating has the opposite effect as positive assortative mating.
Negative Assortative Mating
Possible parent
mating patterns Expected offspring genotypes
AA Aa aa
AA X Aa 2 2
AA X aa 4
Aa X AA 2 2
Aa X aa 2 2
aa X AA
4
aa X Aa 2 2
Total 4
( 17% ) 16
( 67% )
4
( 17% )
Evolutionary Consequences of Non-random Mating
Like recombination, non-random mating can act as an ancillary process for natural selection to cause evolution to occur. Any departure from random mating upsets the equilibrium distribution of genotypes in a population. This will occur whether mate selection is positive or negative assortative. A single generation of random mating will restore genetic equilibrium if no other evolutionary mechanism is operating on the population. However, this does not result in a return to the distribution of population genotypes that existed prior to the period of non-random mating. A comparison of the 2nd and 5th generations in the table below illustrates this fact.
Effects of non-random mating on a populations gene pool
Generation Parent mating pattern Offspring genotype frequencies Effect on
genotype
frequencies
AA Aa aa
1 random 50% 30% 20% equilibrium
2 random 50% 30% 20% equilibrium
3 negative assortative 45% 40% 15% change
4 negative assortative 40% 50% 10% change
5 random 40% 50% 10% equilibrium
6 random 40% 50% 10% equilibrium
7 positive assortative 43% 45% 12% change
8 positive assortative 48% 34% 18% change
NOTE: genotype frequencies in an actual population may differ somewhat from those in
this table, but the direction of change from generation to generation will be the same.
Plant and animal breeders usually employ controlled positive assortative mating to increase the frequency of desirable traits and to reduce genetic variation in a population. In effect, they try to guide the direction of evolution by preventing some individuals from mating and encouraging others to do so. By doing this, farmers, in a sense are acting in the place of nature in selecting winners and losers in the competition for survival. This method has been used to develop purebred varieties of laboratory mice, dogs, horses, and farm animals. The amount of time it takes for this process can be much shorter than one might imagine. If brothers and sisters are mated together every generation, it will only take 20 generations for all individuals in a family line to share 98+% of the same allelesthey essentially will be clones, and breeding results will be close to those resulting from self-fertilization. Commercially sold laboratory research mice have been mated brother to sister for 50-100 generations or more. The downside of this practice is that positive assortative mating results in an increase in homozygosity of harmful alleles if they are present in the gene pool. The high frequency of hip dysplasia , epilepsy , and immune-system malfunctions in some dog varieties are primarily a result of inbreeding. The reduction in viability and subsequent loss of reproductive potential of purebred varieties has been referred to as inbreeding depression. In contrast, animals that have been crossbred with mates from very different genetic lines are more likely to have lower frequencies of homozygous recessive conditions. Subsequently, they are liable to be more viable. This phenomenon has been referred to as hybrid vigor or heterosis .
Human mating rarely is as consistently positive assortative as is the case with purebred domesticated animals. As a consequence, inbreeding depression is rarely a problem except for some reproductively isolated small societies and subcultures. The Old Order Amish are an example. This relatively small population centered in Pennsylvania and Ohio has been self-isolated by their religious beliefs and lifestyle for nearly three centuries. They mostly select mates from within their own communities, which results in positive assortative effects on their gene pool. The Amish population has a comparatively high frequency of Ellis-van Creveld syndrome , which is a genetically inherited disorder characterized by dwarfism, extra fingers, and malformations of the arms, wrists, and heart. The majority of the known cases in the world of this rare syndrome have been found among the Amish, and 7% of them carry the responsible recessive autosomal allele.