Article Abstract:
A quantitative genetic analysis of phenotypic plasticity of diapause induction has been carried out in Allonemobius socius, a cricket. No study has heretofore looked at the quantitative genetic basis of plasticity in phenotype of diapause. The plastic response of female A. socius in response to age and environment was studied. Significant genetic correlations were found between environments for all ages. Selection is more effective at changing the overall shape of the reaction norm than at causing local changes. High genetic correlations may constrain the evolution of the reaction norm. Diapause proportion was heritable. The genetic correlation between ages in proportion of diapausing eggs was close to 1, but decrease was seen with increased difference between ages.
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Article Abstract:
The balance between directional selection, mutation and drift in the evolution of threshold traits is discussed. Mutation may have a significant role in maintaining genetic variation in threshold traits, but some form of selection, perhaps frequency-dependent selection, is necessary to maintain phenotypic variation.
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Article Abstract:
The threshold model can be used as a general-purpose normalizing transformation. To show the usefulness of the approach, results from a simulation study that considers the threshold model a transformation for the estimate of both the heritability and the genetic correlation are presented.
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