The founder effect in a human isolate: Evolutionary implications

Abstract

Abstract An investigation of the founder effect has been made on the H‐leut, a religious isolate. Ninety‐one founders, representing a maximum of 150 independent genomes, have been shown to account for the total gene pool of the 9,536 people in two of the three major subpopulations within the isolate, the S‐leut and the L‐leut. Each of these two leut is subdivided into four clans which in turn are subdivided into colonies. Malécot's coefficient of kinship has been calculated between each of the 91 founders and the contemporary parents, and used to describe the relative genetic contributions of the founders to the gene pool of each subpopulation. Analysis of this distribution suggests that a considerable amount of genetic diversity may be attributable to the founder effect. Part of this diversity may be accounted for by variation in the birth dates of the founders. The size of the subset of the 91 founders related to each subpopulation decreases with decreasing subpopulation level. A correlation has been found between two measures of relationship between pairs of clans: (1) Kurczynski's modification of Mahalanobis's distance measure based on gene frequency differences; and (2) a comparison of the relative contributions of founders to the gene pools of the clans.