The diversity of floral forms in nature can be explained largely as adaptations to the diversity of biotic and abiotic selective agents with which different plant species interact. Ecological genetics is the study of the process of adaptation, and therefore is an ideal approach to understanding floral adaptations. Here I review work on selection and genetic variance and covariance of floral tra...

Reproductive traits of tropical tree species vary predictably in relation to successional stage, but this variation may be due to the species' phylogenetic histories rather than selective pressures imposed by regeneration requirements. Reproductive phenology, tree size at the onset of reproduction, and fecundity of 11 sympatric, closely related Macaranga species were studied to investigate with...

Using pedigree and performance records obtained from two Merino breeders the phenotypic and genetic relationship between subjectively assessed sheep and wool traits and objectively measured wool traits were estimated. The subjective traits were all favourably genetically correlated with fibre diameter. The genetic relationship with body weight, greasy fleece weight and fibre diameter variation ...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Dispersal and establishment ability can influence evolutionary processes such as geographic isolation, adaptive divergence and extinction probability. Through these population-level dynamics, dispersal ability may also influence macro-evolutionary processes such as species distributions and diversification. This study examined patterns of evolution of dispersal-related fruit...

The objective of this study was to determine the relationships between glycolytic enzyme activities and metabolite contents measured at 45 min postmortem in porcine longissimus dorsi muscle, and also investigated the influence of the glycolytic traits on meat quality. The activities of lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and pyruvate kinase (PK) were correlated with ATP content, and LDH activity was po...

Current selection goals in broiler breeding focus on the improvement of live performance traits, such as feed intake, BW, and feed conversion ratio (FCR). The use of electronic feeders allows measurement of feed intake of individuals housed in groups as well as the identification of different feeding behaviors. Feed intake can thus be split into underlying feeding behavior traits, allowing the ...

Two F2 populations segregating for biomass yield and forage quality traits were developed from two separate crosses of tropically adapted maize inbred lines. The parental, F1 generations both evaluated to estimate broad sense heritability, genetic advance correlations these suggest the best as selection criteria towards breeding with high quality.In Cross 1, trait highest broad-sense heritabili...

Plant functional traits capture important variation in plant strategy and function. Recent literature has revealed that within-species variation in traits is greater than previously supposed. However, we still have a poor understanding of how intraspecific variation is coordinated among different traits, and how it is driven by environment. We quantified intraspecific variation in wood density ...