title: Origin, fate, and architecture of ecologically relevant genetic variation.
abstract: Recent advances in molecular genetics combined with field manipulations are yielding new insight into the origin, evolutionary fate, and genetic architecture of phenotypic variation in natural plant populations, with two surprising implications for the evolution of plant genomes. First, genetic loci exhibiting antagonistic pleiotropy across natural environments appear rare relative to loci that are adaptive in one or more environments and neutral elsewhere. These 'conditionally neutral' alleles should sweep to fixation when they arise, yet genome comparisons find little evidence for such selective sweeps. Second, genes under biotic selection tend to be of larger effect than genes under abiotic selection. Recent theory suggests this may be a consequence of high gene flow among populations under selection for local adaptation.
authors.affiliation: Biology Department, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, United States. rob.colautti@duke.edu
authors.forename: Robert I
authors.initials: RI
authors.lastname: Colautti
authors.forename: Cheng-Ruei
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Mitchell-Olds
mesh_terms: D004463:Ecology; D014644:Genetic Variation / Q000235:genetics*; D018745:Genome, Plant / Q000235:genetics*; D012641:Selection, Genetic / Q000235:genetics