Lecture 5

Lecture 5

While the machinery of quantitative genetics can blissfully function in complete ignorance of any of the underlying genetic details, we are certainly interested (at least one some level) on the genetic basis of trait variation. At the most practical level, if a gene of major effect is segregating in our population of interest, we would certainly like to not only to be aware of this, but also to...

Lecture 5

As I have stressed throughout these lectures, in seeking to understand how a mechanism performs its activity, one needs to decompose the mechanism into component operations and component parts. These components constitute a lower level of organization, and research which appeals to lower levels of organization to explain phenomena at higher levels is commonly characterized as reductionistic. Bu...

Lecture 5

While the machinery of quantitative genetics can blissfully function in complete ignorance of any of the underlying genetic details, we are certainly interested (at least one some level) on the genetic basis of trait variation. At the most practical level, if a gene of major effect is segregating in our population of interest, we would certainly like to not only to be aware of this, but also to...

Lecture 5

Lecture 5

Students often ask why we use h rather than h to refer to heritability. You can blame Sewall Wright for this, as he used h to denote the correlation between breeding and phenotypic values within an individual. Recalling that the square of the correlation is the total fraction of variation accounted by a variable leads to the universal use of h. Indeed, whenever we speak of heritability, we alwa...