Population Structure and Quantitative Characters

A migration matrix model is used to investigate the behavior of neutral polygenic characters in subdivided populations. It is shown that gametic disequilibrium has a large effect on the variance among groups but none at all on its expectation. The variance of among-group variance is substantial and does not depend on the number of loci contributing to variance in the character. It is just as large for polygenic characters as for single loci with the same additive variance. This implies that one polygenic character contains exactly as much information about population relationships as one single-locus marker. The theory is compared with observed differentiation of dermatoglyphic and anthropometric characters among Bougainville islanders.