Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Evolutionary Quantitative Genetics: How Little Do We Know?

Evolutionary Quantitative Genetics: How Little Do We Know? The centenary of Galton 's (84) "Natural Inheritance" emphasizes the continu­ ity between the ideas of the early pioneers and the modem renaissance of evolutionary quantitative genetics ( 142). Many questions posed by Galton, Weldon, and Pearson remain only partially answered. Weldon (248) asserted that "the problem of animal evolution is essentially a statistical problem," and argued that legitimate conjectures on macroevolution must be based on understanding the factors shaping microevolution: variation , selection , and heredity. As he not,�d, this demands statistical analysis of phenotypic varia­ tion (including both variances and correlations) , of fitness as a function of phenotype, and of the similarities between parents and offspring. His call, in 1893 , for additional empirical studies of selection in the wild was repeated by Endler in 1986 . In his first statistical analyses of multiple characters, Weldon (247, 248) asked whether phenotypic correlations an<t variances from one population were applicable to others. Like Lofsvold ( 1 56) and Kohn & Atchley ( 129), he l'ound that correlations were relatively constant, but vari­ ances were not. This question of relative constancy of quantitative genetic parameters remains central to evaluations of macroevolutionary analyses that assume constant genetic parameters http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Annual Review of Genetics Annual Reviews

Evolutionary Quantitative Genetics: How Little Do We Know?

Barton, N H; Turelli, M
Annual Review of Genetics , Volume 23 (1) – Dec 1, 1989
Download PDF
34 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/annual-reviews/evolutionary-quantitative-genetics-how-little-do-we-know-AeS2rljkhb

References (91)

Publisher
Annual Reviews
Copyright
Copyright 1989 Annual Reviews. All rights reserved
Subject
Review Articles
ISSN
0066-4197
eISSN
1545-2948
DOI
10.1146/annurev.ge.23.120189.002005
pmid
2694935
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The centenary of Galton 's (84) "Natural Inheritance" emphasizes the continu­ ity between the ideas of the early pioneers and the modem renaissance of evolutionary quantitative genetics ( 142). Many questions posed by Galton, Weldon, and Pearson remain only partially answered. Weldon (248) asserted that "the problem of animal evolution is essentially a statistical problem," and argued that legitimate conjectures on macroevolution must be based on understanding the factors shaping microevolution: variation , selection , and heredity. As he not,�d, this demands statistical analysis of phenotypic varia­ tion (including both variances and correlations) , of fitness as a function of phenotype, and of the similarities between parents and offspring. His call, in 1893 , for additional empirical studies of selection in the wild was repeated by Endler in 1986 . In his first statistical analyses of multiple characters, Weldon (247, 248) asked whether phenotypic correlations an<t variances from one population were applicable to others. Like Lofsvold ( 1 56) and Kohn & Atchley ( 129), he l'ound that correlations were relatively constant, but vari­ ances were not. This question of relative constancy of quantitative genetic parameters remains central to evaluations of macroevolutionary analyses that assume constant genetic parameters

Journal

Annual Review of Genetics – Annual Reviews

Published: Dec 1, 1989

There are no references for this article.