Temporal challenges in detecting balancing selection from population genomic data.

Abstract

The role of balancing selection in maintaining genetic variation remains an open question in population genetics. Recent years have seen numerous studies identifying candidate loci potentially experiencing balancing selection, most predominantly in human populations. There are however numerous alternative evolutionary processes that may leave similar patterns of variation, thereby potentially confounding inference, and the expected signatures of balancing selection additionally change in a temporal fashion. Here we use forward-in-time simulations to quantify expected statistical power to detect balancing selection using both site frequency spectrum (SFS)- and linkage disequilibrium (LD)-based methods under a variety of evolutionarily realistic null models. We find that whilst SFS-based methods have little power immediately after a balanced mutation begins segregating, power increases with time since the introduction of the balanced allele. Conversely, LD-based methods have considerable power whilst the allele is young, and power dissipates rapidly as the time since introduction increases. Taken together, this suggests that SFS-based methods are most effective at detecting long-term balancing selection (>25N generations since the introduction of the balanced allele) whilst LD-based methods are effective over much shorter timescales (<1N generations), thereby leaving a large time frame over which current methods have little power to detect the action of balancing selection. Finally, we investigate the extent to which alternative evolutionary processes may mimic these patterns, and demonstrate the need for caution in attempting to distinguish the signatures of balancing selection from those of both neutral processes (e.g., population structure and admixture) as well as of alternative selective processes (e.g., partial selective sweeps).