title: On the meaning of non-epistatic selection.
abstract: In population genetics, the additive and multiplicative viability models are often used for the quantitative description of models in which the genetic contributions of several different loci are independent; that is, there is no epistasis. Non-epistasis may also be quantitatively defined in terms of measures of interaction used widely in statistics. Setting these measures of epistasis to zero yields alternative definitions of non-epistasis. We show here that these two definitions of non-epistasis are equivalent; that is, in the most general case of a multilocus, multiallele system, the additive and multiplicative viability models are unique solutions of the additive and multiplicative conditions, respectively, for non-epistasis.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-5020, USA. amit8@stanford.edu
authors.forename: Amit
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Puniyani
authors.forename: Uri
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Liberman
authors.forename: Marcus W
authors.initials: MW
authors.lastname: Feldman
mesh_terms: D000483:Alleles; D004843:Epistasis, Genetic; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D012641:Selection, Genetic