The emotion system promotes diversity and evolvability.

ABSTRACT: Studies on the relationship between the optimal phenotype and its environment have had limited focus on genotype-to-phenotype pathways and their evolutionary consequences. Here, we study how multi-layered trait architecture and its associated constraints prescribe diversity. Using an idealized model of the emotion system in fish, we find that trait architecture yields genetic and phenotypic diversity even in absence of frequency-dependent selection or environmental variation. That is, for a given environment, phenotype frequency distributions are predictable while gene pools are not. The conservation of phenotypic traits among these genetically different populations is due to the multi-layered trait architecture, in which one adaptation at a higher architectural level can be achieved by se

SUBMITTER: Giske J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4132677 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature