Brief Communication: Group membership, geography and shared ancestry: Genetic variation in the Basotho of Lesotho

摘要

ObjectivesThe investigation of the evolution of cultural and genetic traits and how they interact represents a vibrant area of research in evolutionary genetics, whose dynamics are particularly relevant for our species. One of the key assumptions of the gene-culture coevolution framework is the coinheritance of cultural and genetic traits. A corollary of the model is that culturally defined groups with a unique (or a limited number of) common origin(s) whose membership is inherited only through the male or female line are expected to show a relatively low intragroup variation for genetic markers similarly transmitted. Across human societies this is expected to be the case for cultural toponymies and family names within patrilineal and matrilineal groups considered in association with the nonrecombining region of the Y chromosome (NRY) and the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) portion of the genome, respectively. This study aims at exploring the degree of correlation between culture and genetics by investigating the genetic variation of culturally and geographically defined groups.