title: The Selective Maintenance of Allelic Variation Under Generalized Dominance.
abstract: Simple models of viability selection acting on variation at a single diploid locus only maintain multiple alleles for very restricted sets of fitnesses. Most of these models assume that fitnesses are independent, even if the genotypes share alleles. Here, we extend this result to a model with generalized dominance interactions, in which fitnesses are strongly affected by what we call the "primary effects" of the genotype's component alleles, so that genotypes with shared alleles have correlated fitnesses. Nevertheless, in keeping with previously reported results, we also show that such fitness sets are easily constructed over time if recurrent mutation is occurring simultaneously. We find that such models maintain less variation over time than do (previous) models with independently sampled fitnesses, especially when the effects of genetic drift are taken into account. We also show that there is a weak tendency for greater weighting of primary effects to evolve over time.
authors.affiliation: Allan Wilson Centre, Department of Zoology, University of Otago, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand hamish.spencer@otago.ac.nz.
authors.forename: Hamish G
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7531-597X
authors.initials: HG
authors.lastname: Spencer
authors.affiliation: Allan Wilson Centre, Department of Zoology, University of Otago, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Cuilodair
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Mitchell
keywords: mathematical model; multiple alleles; natural selection; polymorphism; selection theory