Contributions of subpopulations to total gene diversity

The concept of the partitioning of genetic diversity into a component within and a component among populations (Fsr- or G(ST)-statistics) can be easily expanded to compute the contribution of single subpopulations to total gene diversity. A subpopulation contributes to total gene diversity with its single-population gene diversity plus the (weighted) mean of Nei's minimum genetic distances to all subpopulations. The suggested method allows one to unambiguously rank subpopulations according to the amount they contribute to the total gene diversity. Genetic polymorphisms at four isozyme gene loci of Alnus acuninata in Costa Rica are used to illustrate the procedure and its biological interpretation.