Hitchhiker’s guide to genetic diversity in socially structured populations

When selection increases the frequency of a beneficial gene substitution it can also increase the frequencies of linked neutral alleles through a process called genetic hitchhiking. A model built to investigate reduced genetic diversity in Pleistocene hominins shows that genetic hitchhiking can have a strong effect on neutral diversity in the presence of culturally mediated migration. Under conditions in which genetic and cultural variants are transmitted symmetrically, neutral genes may also hitchhike to higher frequencies on the coattails of adaptive cultural traits through a process called cultural hitchhiking. Cultural hitchhiking has been proposed to explain why some species of matrilineal whales display relatively low levels of mitochondrial DNA diversity, and it may be applicable to humans as well. This paper provides a critical review of recent models of both types of hitchhiking in socially structured populations. The models’ assumptions and predictions are compared and discussed in the hope that studies of reduced genetic diversity in humans might improve our understanding of reduced genetic diversity in other species, and vice versa [Current Zoology 58 (1): 287–297, 2012].