Michael C Whitlock

..Most previous comparisons of F(ST) and Q(ST) are carried out at a single spatial scale. We derive a hierarchical Q(ST) appropriate for study across varying levels of spatial structure...

..The results in this note show that, when combining P-values from multiple tests of the same hypothesis, the weighted Z-method should be preferred...

..These constraints suggest that resource sharing should evolve much more frequently by kin selection than by reciprocity, a prediction that is well supported by observations in the natural world...

..These results are verified by simulation for a broad range of population structures, including the island model, the stepping-stone model, and a model with extinction and recolonization...

..Consequently, the distributions of Q(ST) and F(ST) are well approximated by the Lewontin-Krakauer prediction, even with realistic deviations from the island-model assumptions...

..This change did not return the populations toward their original state before the population bottlenecks. We conclude that the genetic covariance matrix can change as a result of mild genetic drift over a short span of time...

..Several lines of enquiry are suggested to better fill large gaps in our understanding of sexual selection and its effect on genetic load...

..Population structure can play an important role in determining the mean fitness of populations at equilibrium between mutation and selection...

..The power and type I error rate of the new method are far superior to the traditional method of comparing Q(ST) and F(ST)...

..Sexual selection can therefore reduce the risk of extinction of small populations...

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..Markers with lower mutation rates will often be easier to interpret...

..Moreover, we show that heterosis in crosses between populations has a different genetic basis than inbreeding depression within populations and is much more likely to result from alleles of intermediate effect...

..The variance among lines in the residual variance provides some evidence for a genetic basis of developmental stability. Changes in the phenotypic variance of these traits are largely due to changes in the genetic variance...

..While studies of genetic structure per se are often worthwhile, and FST is an excellent measure of the extent of this population structure, it is rare that FST can be translated into an accurate estimate of Nm...

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..The common empirical finding of QTL of large effect is shown to be expected with migration in a heterogeneous landscape, and these QTL may often be composed of several tightly linked alleles of smaller effect...

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..It is shown that QTL studies are biased against detecting chromosome regions that have deleterious pleiotropic effects on characters...

..We show that models of human history that include both population growth and spatial structure can generate the observed patterns without selection...

..g., at the interspecific level) is unlikely to substantially affect the evolution of G...

..The model highlights the importance of determining the contribution of genetic and ecological mechanisms to hybrid fitness if inferences concerning speciation mechanisms are to be made...

..The fixation flux measures the rate of adaptive evolution of a population and, as we shall see, depends strongly on changes that occur in population size...

..Further investigation of two of these lines partially confirmed this finding...

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..Furthermore the heterosis effect will be highly variable throughout the genome, with the largest effect seen near selected genes and in regions of high gene density...

..However, recombination did not accelerate adaptation during either directional or fluctuating selection for geotaxis...

..These results suggest that compensatory evolution at the protein level is partially predictable and may be convergent...

..These results are consistent with the notion that those mutations favoured by natural selection also tend to be favoured by sexual selection...

..Contrary to the expectation from the standard island model, the usual effect of population subdivision is to decrease the effective size relative to a panmictic population living on the same resource...

..Although one pair of lines showed the expected pattern, another pair showed the reverse pattern. More data are needed on this hypothesis, preferably with lines that have more strongly adapted to local environments...

..Drastic changes in the environment can cause changes in phenotypic and genetic variance, but not in a way reliably predicted by the notion of 'stress'...

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..Here we limelight mitochondrial ecology, sexually antagonistic selection, life-history evolution including ageing and disease, and the evolution of mitochondrial inheritance...