RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Variability in fitness effects and the limitations of lineage selection
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 107847
DO 10.1101/107847
A1 Christopher J Graves
A1 Daniel M Weinreich
YR 2017
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/02/11/107847.abstract
AB Natural selection is sensitive not only to the effect of a trait on total number of offspring produced but also to how a trait affects an individual’s entire lineage of descendants. Here we show how a large number of seemingly disparate evolutionary problems, including sex, evolvability, and cooperation, all share the property that fitness varies among members of a lineage. This feature makes it difficult to summarize the evolutionary fate of an allele based solely on its effects on individual reproduction. We show that attempts to average over this variability are often justified, but can sometimes cause misleading results. We then describe a number of intriguing new evolutionary phenomena that have emerged in studies that explicitly model the fate of alleles that influence long-term lineage dynamics. We conclude with prospects for generalizations of population genetics theory and discuss how this theory might be applied to the evolution of infectious diseases.