DOI: 10.5061/dryad.vk4br80
title: Data from: Heterozygosity at neutral and immune loci is not associated with neonatal mortality due to microbial infection in Antarctic fur seals

description: Numerous studies have reported correlations between the heterozygosity of
 genetic markers and fitness. These heterozygosity fitness correlations
 (HFCs) play a central role in evolutionary and conservation biology, yet
 their mechanistic basis remains open to debate. For example, fitness
 associations have been widely reported at both neutral and functional
 loci, yet few studies have directly compared the two, making it difficult
 to gauge the relative contributions of genome-wide inbreeding and
 functional genetic variation to fitness. Here, we compared the effects of
 neutral and immune gene heterozygosity on death from bacterial infection
 in Antarctic fur seal (Arctocephalus gazella) pups. We specifically
 developed a panel of 13 microsatellites from expressed immune genes and
 genotyped these together with 48 neutral loci in 234 individuals,
 comprising 39 pups that were classified at necropsy as having most likely
 died of bacterial infection together with a five times larger matched
 sample of healthy surviving pups. Identity disequilibrium quantified from
 the neutral markers was positive and significant, indicative of variance
 in inbreeding within the study population. However, multilocus
 heterozygosity did not differ significantly between healthy and infected
 pups at either class of marker, and little evidence was found for fitness
 associations at individual loci. These results support a previous study of
 Antarctic fur seals that found no effects of heterozygosity at nine
 neutral microsatellites on neonatal survival, and thereby help to refine
 our understanding of how HFCs vary across the life cycle. Given that
 non-significant HFCs are underreported in the literature, we also hope
 that our study will contribute towards a more balanced understanding of
 the wider importance of this phenomenon.
description: Supplementary Table
 S12362 microsatellite loci
 identified from the Antarctic fur seal transcriptome assembly that consist
 of a minimum of five short tandem repeats with perfect di-, tri- and
 tetranucleotide motifs.Supplementary Table
 S296
 microsatellite loci selected for testing, comprising twenty that appeared
 polymorphic in silico as described by Hoffman and Nichols (2011) plus a
 further 76 loci that carried at least six repeat units.Supplementary Table
 S3Summary of the eleven
 immune microsatellites developed as part of this study.Supplementary Table
 S4Summary of the 48
 neutral loci and the two previously published immune loci (Hoffman and
 Nichols, 2011) genotyped in this study, including their polymorphism
 characteristics in 234 Antarctic fur seal individuals.Supplementary File
 S1R-Markdown
 CodeSupplementary File
 S1R-Markdown
 PDFImmuneMicrosats_supplementaryarc_gaz_transcriptome.fastaarc_gaz_transcriptome.fastaarc_gaz_transcriptome_annotationsimmune_microsats_rawp3_in_fur_sealpvaluesTable of p-values for applying a false discovery rate correctiontranscriptlengthdataRaw genotypes taken from a colony of Antarctic fur seal (Arctocephalus gazella) samples (n=234) at Bird Island, South Georgia between the years of 2000 and 2014. They are scored at 13 immune and 48 neutral microsatellite markers.