engleski

Model-bound and Model-free Approach in Holistic Analysis of Population Structure: Example from the Island of Pag, Croatia

In anthropological investigations of rural populations of the eastern Adriatic region, Croatia, various measures of biological distances (anthropometric body and head distances, physiological, dermato-glyphic and radiogrammetric bone distances), socio-cultural (linguistic), bio-cultural (migrational kin-ship) and genetic distances between inhabitants of nine villages of the island of Pag, Croatia were calcu-lated. A model-bound (Malecot's isolation by distance) and a model-free approach (factor analysis of the structure of correlation matrices among different distance measures) were applied. Linguistic and genetic distances (determined for both sexes), along with most of the analyzed traits in females (kin-ship, anthropometric body and head distances, physiological distances), revealed a good Ťfitť to the isolation by distance model. Patterns of correlations among 17 distance matrices in both sexes were analyzed, and factor analysis was performed over the correlation matrix obtained (after exclusion of some traits), explaining 88.9% of total variance by 11 retained variables that yielded five factors. A higher-order varimax rotation of the factor correlation matrix indicated that the major source of popu-lation variability was neither sex-related nor variable-specific, but rather lay in the interaction of popu-lation intrinsic variation and the extrinsic homogenizing effects of their environment. The authors dis-cuss and compare the application of model-bound and model-free approach in the study of population structure, stressing the dependence of the rate of (micro)evolutionary processes upon the historical pro-cesses that favored or restricted gene flow. Results of different processes of homogenization and/or selective inertia were discussed, on strictly biological, bio-cultural and socio-cultural traits in the forma-tion of population structure.

model-bound and model-free approach; population structure; population genetics; anthropology

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