How Much Do Genetic Covariances Alter The Rate Of Adaptation?

Main Category: Genetics
Article Date: 01 Jan 2009 - 2:00 PDT

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Organisms are composed of suites of correlated traits. If these traits have a shared genetic basis, these relationships can influence their evolution.

While this possibility is well known, it remains unclear how commonly genetic relationships between traits affects their evolution in nature. Here we introduce a new metric for quantifying whether the relationships between traits affects the rate of adaptation, and evaluate it using data from the literature.

We find little evidence for the widespread intuition that genetic correlations restrict the rate of adaptation. Understanding when and whether the correlations among traits will affect their evolution remains an ongoing challenge.

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Proceedings B is the Royal Society's flagship biological research journal, dedicated to the rapid publication and broad dissemination of high-quality research papers, reviews and comment and reply papers. The scope of journal is diverse and is especially strong in organismal biology.

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences