Genetic differentiation among four groups of fishermen of the eastern coast, India

Fluctuating asymmetry and canalization: An appraisal based on a-b ridge counts among Indian populations with diverse backgrounds

The relationship between fluctuating asymmetry, measured as the absolute difference between the right and left a-b ridge counts, and total a-b (R + L) ridge count was studied in an assortment of Indian population samples representing a wide spectrum of socioeconomic and occupational backgrounds. They included marine fishermen, inland and estuarine fishermen as well as migrants and their parental counterparts, tribes, and castes of different hierarchy- lower, middle, and upper. The samples together numbered a total of 3,239 subjects, 2,240 males and 999 females. The results failed to support Jantz and Webb's (1980) hypothesis of a quadratic relationship between fluctuating asymmetry of a-b ridge count and its phenotypic value. Only 3 of 22 samples (about 13%) showed a significant fit with a reasonable degree of consistency over a set of independent random subsamples; even initially only 7 of 22 (about 30%) samples showed a significant fit, or nearly so. Supplementary evidence drawn from these populations with reference to the relationship between fluctuating asymmetry and heterozygosity levels and inbreeding coefficients was also consistent with the interference that fluctuating asymmetry of a-b as it is measured and examined at the population level does not reflect canalization. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 11:367-381, 1999. Copyright 1999 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Genetic affinities between the migrant and parental populations of fishermen, East coast, India

Genetic affinities between the migrant groups of fishermen from Puri and their parental counterparts in the Southern areas were examined using 11 genetic loci: four blood groups, five red cell enzymes, and two serum proteins. The samples for the parental populations (about 430 subjects) were drawn from 34 villages spread along the 400 km coast in Ganjam district of Orissa and the contiguous Srikakulam, Vishakhapatnam, and East Godavari districts of Andhra Pradesh. Significant departures between the migrant groups and their parental counterparts were observed at some loci, although the configuration of interpopulation distances among the migrants mimicked that of the parental populations. While the observed differences may be due to a founder effect and subsequent random genetic drift in at least two of the three small populations, given high child mortality and the systematic nature of differences observed, the role of selection cannot be totally ruled out. © 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.