Insular (island-limited) populations typically show signatures of weak purifying selection, indicating high genetic load and reduced fitness compared with mainland populations. However, the source of this pattern is often unclear-it may reflect residual signatures from a temporary period of small effective population size (Ne) associated with island colonisation (founder effects), persistently small Ne due to the lower carrying capacity of islands (range limitations), or relaxed selective constraints unrelated to Ne. Here we disentangle these hypotheses by analysing the drivers of variation in evolutionary rates of nonsynonymous (dN) and synonymous (dS) sites in nine mitochondrial genes (8001bp) from 40 rail species (Aves: Rallidae). We find that insular species with short terminal branches (indicating recent island colonisation) have highly elevated mitochondrial dN/dS across multiple mitochondrial genes. In contrast, rails representing more ancient island colonisations have dN/dS ratios that are indistinguishable from mainland/widespread species. Furthermore, we find that island size is unrelated to dN/dS among island species. These results indicate that insular rails suffer a high initial cost of island colonisation and undergo a period of inefficient selection due to founder effects, but that there is little impact from longer-term range limitations or relaxed selection.
Wanders et al. (Tue,) studied this question.