Many animals do not sit still: they settle, migrate, develop new spaces, expand their ranges. Who are they? Where are they from and where are they going? How do colonist populations differ from maternal populations? What microevolutionary processes accompany the colonization process? Now in Kalmykia, the gerbil is returning to its homeland. The animals are returning to the places from which 10 years ago they were displaced by the spreading steppe - tall grass is not for desert inhabitants. Now the desert is returning again, and gerbils are following it. Using the analysis of molecular genetic markers, we want to understand where they come from and where they go, whether they differ in genetic marks from those that remain in place, how diverse is the genetic composition of the colonists?
In a paper published in Animals, sequences of the control region and cytochrome b gene were used to compare the genetic makeup of new colonies (West) of the midday gerbil with that of the possible founders (East and Northeast). It was possible to show that in new colonies, genetic diversity decreases, but the proportion of rare alleles increases. Another important feature of new colonies is their high spatial structure – individual colonies here differ from each other much more than in the founder populations.
These results provide empirical support for the concept of "allelic surfing". This work is one of the few in the world that describes the processes of genetic changes in colonists in real time.
The work was carried out within the framework of the RSF project 22-14-00223. More about the project.
The work was published in the journal Animals: Does the Colonizing Population Exhibit a Reduced Genetic Diversity and Allele Surfing? A Case Study of the Midday Gerbil (Meriones meridianus Pallas) Expanding Its Range. ) Expanding Its Range. // Animals.- 2024.- Т.14. - 2720. Batova, O.N., Markov, N.I., Titov, S.V., Tchabovsky.