Evolution of Genetic Covariance Structure

个体差异的遗传基础是复杂的，但对所有生物系统都有许多重要的影响。一个复杂的因素是，单个基因可以影响生物体的多个特征或性状。该项目研究这些共享的遗传关联或协方差是如何构建的，以及它们如何随时间变化。理论群体遗传模型将被用来研究遗传方差和协方差的变化模式下的遗传漂变与不同的假设基因的作用模式。这些分析为比较研究种群内和种群间的遗传协方差模式提供了基础，所有生物体功能的遗传过程在这些生物体的特征之间产生耦合，对进化变化产生重要影响。我们目前还没有一个足够的框架来研究这些遗传关联如何随着时间的推移而变化。了解这些过程对于解释在生物体中观察到的巨大多样性以及更实用的追求，如农业选择和濒危物种的保护非常重要。

The genetic basis of differences among individuals is complex yet has many important implications for all biological systems. One complicating factor is that individual genes can influence more than one feature or trait of an organism. This project investigates how these shared genetic associations, or covariances, are structured and how they change through time. Theoretical population-genetic models will be used to study how patterns of genetic variance and covariance change under genetic drift with different assumptions regarding the mode of gene action. Such analyses provide the basis for comparative studies of the pattern of genetic covariance within and between populations.The genetic processes underlying the function of all organisms generate couplings among the features of those organisms that can have an important influence on evolutionary change. We currently do not have an adequate framework for studying how these genetic associations change through time. Understanding these processes is important for explaining the great diversity observed among living organisms, as well as more applied pursuits such as agricultural selection and the conservation of endangered species.