Correlation of life-history traits with the molecular diversity of bird nuclear coding elements

Question: Is there a relationship between mutations in nuclear coding genes sites and life-history traits? Analyses of polymorphism data of Ayes nuclear genes suggest that this is the case. Data: Obtained from Polymorphix and Popset of GenBank: 752 groups of polymorphism data from 104 Ayes nuclear genes of 15 families, 53 genera, 297 species. Search method: We used Watterson's estimator (theta(w)), calculated separately from the non-synonymous (theta(a))and synonymous (theta(s))sites of the various gene fragments. We performed correlation analysis of the proportion of average non-synonymous mutation sites in coding genes sites and four life-history traits (body mass, metabolic rate, generation time, and longevity). Conclusions: The proportion of non-synonymous sites is significantly negatively correlated with body mass. But the proportion of non-synonymous sites is not significantly correlated with generation time. A larger fraction of slightly deleterious mutations is fixed in species with either a bigger body mass or a low effective population size (Ne).