Evolutionary Pattern and Process

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9903934Arnold This study will develop new methods for analyzing evolutionary patterns in continuous characters. Evolutionary patterns are trends over time in the variation and covariation of characters. Continuous characters are a particularly important category of phenotypic traits. Body size, morphological measurements, physiological attributes, and many behavioral characteristics show continuous variation in natural populations and are referred to as continuous characters. The methods that will be developed use models of inheritance (quantitative inheritance) in which the characters are affected by many genetic elements, each of which has a small effect. To use these models, their evolution tendencies must be assayed. Those assays will be accomplished by comparing inheritance of scalation traits in multiple populations of closely related species of garter snake (Thamnophis).Although some characters are affected by one or a few genes, most characters show quantitative inheritance. Agriculturally important traits such as body size and such medical conditions as schizophrenia are examples of traits with quantitative inheritance. To understand how these traits change both in the short term and in the long run, their inheritance systems must be studied. The methods to be developed are among the first to address the issue of long term trends in the inheritance of characters affected by many genes.