TY - JOUR T1 - A high-density linkage map reveals sexually-dimorphic recombination landscapes in red deer (<em>Cervus elaphus</em>) JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/100131 SP - 100131 AU - Susan E. Johnston AU - Jisca Huisman AU - Philip A. Ellis AU - Josephine M. Pemberton Y1 - 2017/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/01/13/100131.abstract N2 - High density linkage maps are an important tool to gain insight into the genetic architecture of traits of evolutionary and economic interest. Here, we used information from the cattle genome to inform and refine a high density linkage map in a wild population of red deer (Cervus elaphus). We constructed a predicted linkage map of 38,038 SNPs and a skeleton map of 10,835 SNPs across 34 linkage groups. We identified several chromosomal rearrangements in the deer lineage, including six fissions, one fusion and two large inversion events. Our findings also showed strong concordance with map orders in the cattle genome. The sex-average linkage map length was 2739.7cM; the female autosomal map length was 1.21 longer than that of males (2767.4cM vs 2280.8cM, respectively). Differences in map lengths between the sexes was driven by markedly increased female recombination in centromeric regions and reduced male and female recombination at sub-telomeric regions. This observed pattern is unusual relative to other mammal species, where centromeric recombination is suppressed and telomeric recombination rates are higher in males. Overall, these maps provide an insight into recombination landscapes in mammals, and will provide a valuable resource for studies of evolution, genetic improvement and population management in red deer and related species. ER -