Predation plays a central role in evolutionary processes, but little is known about how predators affect the expression of heritable variation, restricting our ability to predict evolutionary effects of predation. We reared families of three-spined stickleback Gasterosteus aculeatus from two populations-one with a history of fish predation (predator sympatric) and one without (predator naive)-a...

Under the mutation accumulation model of senescence, it was predicted that the additive genetic variance (VA) for fitness traits will increase with age. We measured age-specific mortality and fecundity from 65,134 Drosophila melanogaster and estimated genetic variance components, based on reciprocal crosses of extracted second chromosome lines. Elsewhere we report the results for mortality. Her...

Genomic evaluation models can fit additive and dominant SNP effects. Under quantitative genetics theory, additive or "breeding" values of individuals are generated by substitution effects, which involve both "biological" additive and dominant effects of the markers. Dominance deviations include only a portion of the biological dominant effects of the markers. Additive variance includes variatio...

Researchers in evolutionary genetics recently have recognized an exciting opportunity in decomposing beneficial mutations into their proximal, mechanistic determinants. The application of methods and concepts from molecular biology and life history theory to studies of lytic bacteriophages (phages) has allowed them to understand how natural selection sees mutations influencing life history. Thi...

BACKGROUND Ratios of age-adjusted rates between a set of geographic units and the overall area are of interest to the general public and to policy stakeholders. These ratios are correlated due to two reasons-the first being that each region is a component of the overall area and hence there is an overlap between them; and the second is that there is spatial autocorrelation between the regions. ...

This paper proposes to estimate the covariance matrix of stock returns by an optimally weighted average of two existing estimators: the sample covariance matrix and single-index covariance matrix. This method is generally known as shrinkage, and it is standard in decision theory and in empirical Bayesian statistics. Our shrinkage estimator can be seen as a way to account for extra-market covari...

By treating error probability law as a parameter of interest, location and scale as nuisance parameters in location-scale model, this paper suggests that modified profile likelihood (MPL), considered as quasi-likelihood function of the error probability law, be used for its selection. This model selection method is proved to be consistent and achieves minimax rate optimality. Simulations show i...

PETER MEDAWAR proposed that senescence arises from an age-related decline in the force of selection, which allows late-acting deleterious mutations to accumulate. Subsequent workers have suggested that mutation accumulation could produce an age-related increase in additive genetic variance (VA) for fitness traits, as recently found in Drosophila melanogaster. Here we report results from a genet...