Detecting selection with a genetic cross.

ABSTRACT: Distinguishing which traits have evolved under natural selection, as opposed to neutral evolution, is a major goal of evolutionary biology. Several tests have been proposed to accomplish this, but these either rely on false assumptions or suffer from low power. Here, I introduce an approach to detecting selection that makes minimal assumptions and only requires phenotypic data from ∼10 individuals. The test compares the phenotypic difference between two populations to what would be expected by chance under neutral evolution, which can be estimated from the phenotypic distribution of an F₂ cross between those populations. Simulations show that the test is robust to variation in the number of loci affecting the trait, the distribution of locus effect sizes, heritability, dominance

SUBMITTER: Fraser HB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7486746 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature