Highlights
- •Y-chromosome variation is strongly stratified across the main ecological regions of Ecuador.
- •Genetic ancestry patterns fit well with expectations according to census data.
- •European ancestry is particularly high in Ecuadorian Y-chromosomes (61%).
- •The main geographic pole for Afro-Ecuadorian ancestry is in the Northwest.
Abstract
Ecuadorians originated from a complex mixture of Native American indigenous people
with Europeans and Africans. We analyzed Y-chromosome STRs (Y-STRs) in a sample of
415 Ecuadorians (145 using the AmpFlSTR® Yfiler™ system [Life Technologies, USA] and 270 using the PowerPlex®Y23 system [Promega Corp., USA]; hereafter Yfiler and PPY23, respectively) representing
three main ecological continental regions of the country, namely Amazon rainforest,
Andes, and Pacific coast. Diversity values are high in the three regions, and the
PPY23 exhibits higher discrimination power than the Yfiler set. While summary statistics,
AMOVA, and RST distances show low to moderate levels of population stratification, inferred ancestry
derived from Y-STRs reveal clear patterns of geographic variation. The major ancestry
in Ecuadorian males is European (61%), followed by an important Native American component
(34%); whereas the African ancestry (5%) is mainly concentrated in the Northwest corner
of the country. We conclude that classical procedures for measuring population stratification
do not have the desirable sensitivity. Statistical inference of ancestry from Y-STRS
is a satisfactory alternative for revealing patterns of spatial variation that would
pass unnoticed when using popular statistical summary indices.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: November 22, 2017
Accepted:
November 18,
2017
Received in revised form:
November 16,
2017
Received:
June 28,
2017
Identification
Copyright
© 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
