DRIFT OR SELECTION: A STATISTICAL TEST OF GENE FREQUENCY VARIATION OVER GENERATIONS

摘要

The method used by Fisher and Ford (1947) to study the spread of a gene in a natural population has been modified to analyze the variation in allele frequencies from generation to generation in a common experimental procedure. A further analysis has been developed that is more sensitive to directional trends in the allele frequency over generations, and its use in detecting the action of directional selection on gene frequency at a locus is discussed. The power of each of these statistical tests is calculated for a number of cases, and the tests are applied to sets of isozyme data from Drosophila pseudoobscura and Zea mays .