DETECTING IMMIGRATION BY USING MULTILOCUS GENOTYPES

Immigration is an important force shaping the social structure, evolut ion, and genetics of populations, A statistical method is presented th at uses multilocus genotypes to identify individuals who are immigrant s, or have recent immigrant ancestry, The method is appropriate for us e with allozymes, microsatellites, or restriction fragment length poly morphisms (RFLPs) and assumes linkage equilibrium among loci, Potentia l applications include studies of dispersal among natural populations of animals and plants, human evolutionary studies, and typing zoo anim als of unknown origin (for use in captive breeding programs), The meth od is illustrated by analyzing RFLP genotypes in samples of humans fro m Australian, Japanese, New Guinean, and Senegalese populations, The t est has power to detect immigrant ancestors, for these data, up to two generations in the past even though the overall differentiation of al lele frequencies among populations is low.