Jason B Wolf

..Our approach can be used in both experimental and natural populations, providing a widely practicable means of expanding our understanding of MGEs...

..Thus, we suggest that phenotype-based mapping approaches can significantly advance our understanding of various aspects of genomic imprinting, especially when integrated with other molecular or bioinformatic approaches...

..Genomic imprinting evolves in this model because it leads to a pattern of gene expression in the nuclear haplotype that is coadapted with (i.e., adaptively coordinated with) gene expression in the coinherited cytoplasmic genome...

..Our findings also show that the imprinting pattern of a locus can be variable over ontogenetic time and, in contrast to current views, may often be stronger at later stages in life...

..Our application of the model to a genome scan supports this assertion by identifying pairs of loci that show reciprocal changes in their imprinting status as the background provided by the other locus changes...

..Thus, imprinting may act as a genomic 'cloaking device' during critical periods in development when selective abortion is possible...

..Here we provide a general introduction to the concept of competition dependence and briefly introduce two models to demonstrate the potential evolutionary consequences of competition-dependent trait expression...

..Our technique holds promise in directing future work into the genetic basis and functional relationship of traits mediating and responding to ecological interactions...

..In conjunction with existing hypotheses, our results suggest that imprinting may have evolved due to different selective pressures at different loci...

..Thus, although epistatic pleiotropy made a smaller contribution than single-locus pleiotropy, it clearly made a significant contribution to the genetic architecture of variation/covariation...

..We also argue that one should consider cases where the maternal effect is conditional on offspring genotype as a class of maternal effects...

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..Moreover, theoretical work on the evolution of sex-dependent genomic imprinting effects makes specific predictions about the phenotypic patterns of such effects, which, however, have not been assessed empirically to date...

..Our results provide a mechanism for the maintenance of heritable variation in natural populations and suggest an area for research into the importance of competition in the genetic architecture of fitness related traits...

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..Nearly all single-locus and epistatic pleiotropic effects contributed positive components to covariances between traits, suggesting that genetic integration in the skull is achieved by a complex combination of pleiotropic effects...

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..Additionally, studies that ignore IGEs may over- or underestimate quantitative genetic parameters, as well as the effect of and variance contributed by QTL...

..discoideum. More generally, they suggest that simple rules governing interactions between individuals can be sufficient to generate a diverse array of outcomes that appear complex and unpredictable when those rules are unknown...

..Our results demonstrate and define social interactions between D. discoideum isolates, thus providing a conceptual framework for the study of the genetic mechanisms that underpin social evolution...