Rhesus polymorphism in New Caledonia. II. Genetic comparison with other Oceanians.

Rhesus haplotype frequencies computed for 804 and 546 Wallisians from New Caledonia are compared to the data collected for 13 Oceanian samples belonging to the same Austronesian linguistic family. Genetic distances are computed between the 15 populations and used for a principal coordinate analysis. Kanaks are genetically close to Fidjians, while the Wallisian sample share a high genetic similarity with the Tonga islanders. The results obtained for the whole area including the Wallis homeland for the Wallisian sample indicate a tight relationship between geographical and genetic differentiations in the Pacific, supported by a high correlation coefficient between the two distance matrices. However, the observed patterns are better explained by the history of migrations reconstructed from archaeological and linguistic data than by a pure isolation-by-distance model.