The scanqtl function, while completely flexible and so suitable for most purposes, is rather cumbersome to use. Our most important additions are the functions addqtl, to scan for a single QTL to be added to a multiple-QTL model, and addpair, to scan for a pair of QTL to be added to a multiple-QTL model. The output of these functions is of the forms produced by scanone and scantwo, respectively,...

Developmental evolutionary biology has, in the past decade, started to move beyond simply adapting traditional population and quantitative genetics models and has begun to develop mathematical approaches that are designed specifically to study the evolution of complex, nonadditive systems. This article first reviews some of these methods, discussing their strengths and shortcomings. The article...

Variation in vein position and wing shape of Drosophila melanogaster depends on many genes. In the following, we report the results of a QTL analysis of wing shape in D. melanogaster. We identified QTL responsible for natural variation for wing shape and analyzed their interactions with developmental genetic signaling pathways important for vein positioning. The QTL analysis indicated that the ...

Background Quantitative Structure Activity Relationship (QSAR) is a difficult computational chemistry approach for beginner scientists and a time consuming one for even more experienced researchers. Method and Materials Ezqsar which is introduced here addresses both the issues. It considers important steps to have a reliable QSAR model. Besides calculation of descriptors using CDK library, hi...

Inferences regarding phylogenetic patterns and constraints on the evolution of characters often can be derived only from comparisons of extant species. If the phylogeny of these species is known, then the mean phenotypes of taxa can be partitioned into heritable phylogenetic effects and nonheritable residual components. Methods are presented for the estimation of phylogenywide means of characte...

The usual analysis of genotype × environment interaction (G × E) is based on the linear regression of genotypic performance on environmental changes (e.g., classic stability analysis). This linear model may often lead to lumping together of the non-linear responses to the whole range of environmental changes from suboptimal and super optimal conditions, thereby lowering the power of detecting G...

Life-history theory predicts that resource scarcity constrains individual optimal reproductive strategies and shapes the evolution of life-history traits. In species where the inherited structure of social class may lead to consistent resource differences among family lines, between-class variation in resource availability should select for divergence in optimal reproductive strategies. Evaluat...