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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1976 May;73(5):1689–1692. doi: 10.1073/pnas.73.5.1689

Evolution of continuous variation: direct approach through joint distribution of genotypes and phenotypes.

L L Cavalli-Sforza, M W Feldman
PMCID: PMC430365  PMID: 1064041

Abstract

The evolutionary dynamics of the joint distribution of genotypes and phenotypes is studied. The model, originally devised to study the joint effects of Mendelian and other types of transmissions, provides results of interest also to the theory of direct Mendelian transmission with natural selection. Assuming bivariate normal distributions, it is shown that in the latter case genotypic and phenotypic means and variances, and genotype-phenotype correlation can be expressed recursively as functions of the parameters for the selection, environmental, and mutation variance. Equilibria and rates of approach for these moments are calculated. It is also proved that in the presence of selection the heritability,defined as the ratio of expected genotypic to expected phenotypic variance after selection, is greater than that before selection by a predictable amount and that it can be greater than unity.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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