Re: Heritability of fitness

Perplexed in Peoria wrote:
> "Anon." <bob.ohara@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:dp6luk$1q82$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>>Perplexed in Peoria wrote:
>>
>>>So my current understanding of this is that the heritability of fitness
>>>in the wild is near zero at most times and places for most species.
>>>But occasionally, due to environmental change or the freak appearance
>>>of a rare beneficial mutation, the heritability of fitness in a population
>>>rises to a level high enough to actually DO something.
>>>
>>>Which leads me to wonder - why was there ANY opposition in the pop gen
>>>community to Gould's and Lewontin's ideas regarding punctuated
>>>equilibrium?
>>>
>>
>>Did they notice it? Punk eek was Gould and Eldridge,
>
>
> Whoops. Yes it was. My mistake.
>
>
>>and was
>>paleontology, not population genetics. The time scales are so
>>different, it's difficult to link the two.
>
>
> I'm not convinced that the time scales are all that different. You
> are involved in an empirical branch of pop-gen, and on fast breeding
> microorganisms to boot.

As well as slightly slower breeding organisms such as lepidoptera and
frogs .

But in general, theoretical population
> geneticists are interested in selection coefficients down to the
> empirically inaccessible region of near neutrality, which means that
> they are looking at time scales to fixation of up to Ne generations.
> And when you apply that to the relatively long-lived and populous
> beasties of interest to paleontologists, you are talking millions of
> years for both paleo and pop gen.
>
I would have thought that there would be few large beasties with Ne
anywhere near 10^6: 10^4 perhaps, but I would guess that most
populations are nearer 10^2 to 10^3.

> But you may be right that the opposition to punk eek was from the same
> old-school synthesists who opposed Kimura, rather than from the more
> mathematically literate pop gen crowd.
>
When Gould was here a few years ago he had a discussion session with
some of us in the geology department, and he commented that the time
scales are so different that what population geneticists would consider
large changes in phenotype (he used an example of size in sparrows: I
can't remember the details) could happen many times in the blink of the
geologic eye.

Bob

--
Bob O'Hara
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
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.

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