The genetic structure of populations from Haiti and Jamaica reflect divergent demographic histories

Abstract

The West Indies represent an amalgamation of African, European and in some cases, East Asian sources, but the contributions from each ethnic group remain relatively unexplored from a genetic perspective. In the present study, we report, for the first time, allelic frequency data across the complete set of 15 autosomal STR loci for general collections from Haiti and Jamaica, which were subsequently used to examine the genetic diversity present in each island population. Our results indicate that although both Haiti and Jamaica display genetic affinities with the continental African collections, a stronger African signal is detected in Haiti than in Jamaica. Although only minimal contributions from non-African sources were observed in Haiti, Jamaica displays genetic input from both European and East Asian sources, an admixture profile similar to other New World collections of African descent analyzed in this report. The divergent genetic signatures present in these populations allude to the different migratory events of Africans, Europeans, and East Asians into the New World.

Paternal lineages signal distinct genetic contributions from British Loyalists and continental Africans among different Bahamian islands

“…The considerable proportion (ranging from 71.2% to 79.7%) of haplogroup A1b-V152, B-M60, E1a-M33, E1b1a-M2, and E2b-M98 lineages in the Bahamian paternal gene pool (with the exception of the Long Island population), signals a direct genetic connection with continental Africa, consistent with earlier reports based on classical (Halberstein et al, 1981) and autosomal STR Simms et al, 2008Simms et al, , 2010Simms et al, , 2011 markers. Genetic affinities between the Bahamas and continental Africa, which are also observed in the MDS (Fig.…”

“…These investigations, which are based exclusively on classical (Halberstein et al, 1981) and autosomal STR (Duncan et al, 1996;Budowle et al, 1999;Herrera et al, 2004;Simms et al, 2008Simms et al, , 2010Simms et al, , 2011 polymorphisms, reveal substantial gene flow from continental Africa and varying degrees of genetic input from European, East Asian and Native American ancestors. In this article, we explore, for the first time, the paternal genetic histories of six Bahamian islands and their relationships with previously published reference collections using highresolution Y-chromosome binary markers.…”

Not Haitian: Exploring the Roots of Dominican Identity

“…However, Dominicans are lighter-skinned than Haitians who have had much less miscegenation: 95% are Black and 5% are Mulatto and White (Simms et al 2010;World Factbook 2016b). The term indio connotes Indian, and while their ancestry is as much as 9% Indian (Gates 2011), their African ancestry far surpasses their Indian ancestry and is determinative of their Black phenotype.…”

Allele frequencies of 15 autosomal STR loci in the Caymanian population

“…Of the 105 pairwise comparisons for linkage disequilibrium, 5 indicated departure from linkage equilibrium (Table S2) but this was also not significant after the application of the Bonferroni procedure. A pairwise Fisher's exact test [9] (GenePop Software v4.2.2 [10]) was performed with the Cayman Islands data and each of the comparison population datasets [1][2][3], locus by locus, under the null hypothesis that the alleles were drawn from the same distribution in the comparison population as they were from the Caymanian population (Table S3). This hypothesis was not supported at all of the loci tested for any of the comparison populations; however, support was detected at a number of loci in the African-American, Caucasian and both Jamaican datasets.…”

“…Population data . Forensic genetics Allelic distribution datasets for overlapping collections of STRs have been published for a number of island nations in the Caribbean region [1][2][3], but not for the Cayman Islands. The Cayman Islands were part of the Colony of Jamaica until Jamaican independence in 1962, and Jamaica remains the most common birthplace of those Caymanians not born in the Cayman Islands (14 % of Caymanians); no other foreign birthplace, except for the USA (5.9 %), exceeds 5 % [4].…”