GenoCline: On the trail of spatial patterns of genetic variation
- Jose Peña,
- Luis Gómez-Pérez,
- Miguel Alfonso-Sánchez
Luis Gómez-Pérez
Universidad del País Vasco Facultad de Ciencia y Tecnología
Author ProfileMiguel Alfonso-Sánchez
Universidad del País Vasco Facultad de Ciencia y Tecnología
Author ProfileAbstract
The accurate determination of the spatial trends on the variability of
the gene pool of a species is essential to elucidate the underlying
demographic-evolutionary events and, ultimately, to unravel the
microevolutionary history of the species or population under
examination. In this work, we present a new software tool called
GenoCline, which is essentially devised to assist in detecting genetic
clines from allele and phenotypic frequency data, and even from
genome-wide data. This program package allows identifying the geographic
orientation of clinal genetic variation through a system of iterative
rotation of a virtual coordinate axis. At the same time, GenoCline can
also be used to carry out complementary statistical analyses aimed at
clarifying the potential origin of the genetic clines found, among which
stand out spatial autocorrelation, isolation by distance, centroid
method, multidimensional scaling and Sammon projection. Among the main
advantages of this software are those related to ease in data entry and
potential interconnection with other programs. Data entry is
user-friendly. Genetic frequencies and geographic coordinates can be
easily entered in spreadsheet table formatting, while genome-wide data
can be imported in Eigensoft format. Genetic frequencies can also be
exported in a format compatible with other programs dealing with
population genetics and evolutionary biology. All illustrations of
results are saved in eps format so that there will be high quality and
easily editable vectorial graphs available for the researcher. GenoCline
is implemented in Java, so it can be used with different operating
systems.09 Jun 2020Submitted to Molecular Ecology Resources 30 Jun 2020Reviewer(s) Assigned
08 Aug 2020Review(s) Completed, Editorial Evaluation Pending