So far in this course we have dealt entirely with the evolution of characters that are controlled by simple Mendelian inheritance at a single locus. There are notes on the course website about gametic disequilibrium and how allele frequencies change at two loci simultaneously, but we didn’t discuss them. In every example we’ve considered we’ve imagined that we could understand something about evolution by examining the evolution of a single gene. That’s the domain of classical population genetics. For the next few weeks we’re going to be exploring a field that’s actually older than classical population genetics, although the approach we’ll be taking to it involves the use of population genetic machinery. If you know a little about the history of evolutionary biology, you may know that after the rediscovery of Mendel’s work in 1900 there was a heated debate between the “biometricians” (e.g., Galton and Pearson) and the “Mendelians” (e.g., de Vries, Correns, Bateson, and Morgan). Biometricians asserted that the really important variation in evolution didn’t follow Mendelian rules. Height, weight, skin color, and similar traits seemed to

Human biochemical genetics

The Science Question in Feminism

Feminism and Science

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/259/5098/1208.2.full.pdf

Progress in physiology.

The common fruit fly, Drosophila, has long been one of the most productive of all laboratory animals. From 1910 to 1940, the centre of Drosophila culture in America was the school of Thomas Hunt Morgan and his students, Alfred Sturtevant and Calvin Bridges. They first created \"standard\" flies through inbreeding and by organizing a network for exchanging stocks of flies which spread their practices around the world. In \"Lords of the Fly\", Robert E. Kohler argues that fly laboratories are a special kind of ecological niche in which the wild fruit fly is transformed into an artificial animal with a distinctive natural history. He shows that the fly was essentially a laboratory tool whose startling productivity opened many new lines of genetic research. Kohler also explores the moral economy of the \"Drosophilists\": the rules for regulating access to research tools, allocating credit for achievements, and transferring authority from one generation of scientists to the next. By closely examining the Drosophilists' culture and customs, Kohler reveals essential features of how experimental scientists do their work.

The Fly of the Lords@@@Lords of the Fly: Drosophila Genetics and the Experimental Life.

Ecologists and evolutionary biologists are fascinated by life’s variation but also seek to understand phenomena and mechanisms that apply broadly across taxa. Model systems can help us extr...

Model Systems in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior: A Call for Diversity in Our Model Systems and Discipline*

Understanding the genetic architecture of complex trait adaptation in natural populations requires the continued development of tractable models that explicitly confront organismal and environmental complexity A decade of high-throughput sequencing-based investigations into the genomic basis of migration points to an integrative framework that incorporates quantitative genetics, evolutionary developmental biology, phenotypic plasticity, and epigenetics to explain migration evolution In this perspective, I argue that the transcontinental migration of the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) can serve as a compelling system to study the mechanism of evolutionary lability of a complex trait Monarchs show significant phenotypic and genotypic diversity across their global range, with phenotypic switching that allows for explicit study of evolutionary lability A developmental approach for elucidating how migratory traits are generated and functionally integrated will be important for understanding the evolution of monarch migration traits I propose a plasticity threshold model to describe migration lability, and I describe novel functional techniques that will help resolve open questions and model assumptions I conclude by considering the relationships between adaptive genetic architecture, anthropogenic climate change, and conservation management practice and the timeliness of the monarch migration model to illuminate these connections given the rapid decline of the North American migration

Delbert A. Green

Papers

Model Systems in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior: A Call for Diversity in Our Model Systems and Discipline*

Monarch Butterfly Migration as an Integrative Model of Complex Trait Evolution.