Identity and coalescence in structured populations: a commentary on 'Inbreeding coefficients and coalescence times' by Montgomery Slatkin

摘要

There is currently a big push to identify the genes underlying quantitative characters, and indeed this is one of the missions of the journal that now inherits the mantle from Genetical Research. From an evolutionary perspective, why is this better than measuring heritabilities and genetic correlations? As has become clear from the sophisticated multilocus models that have been developed following Lande's work (e.g. Barton & Turelli, 1987, 1991), at least part of the answer is that we need to know the distribution of mutational effects underlying genetic variation in order to know whether the assumptions that Lande makes.