Ebook: Population Genetics: Basic Principles

I have for a number of years taught a course in population genetics for students interested in plant and animal breeding. The objective of the course has been to lay a foundation in population genetics for the concepts of quantitative genetics which are introduced in the last third of the course. I have not been able to find an appropriate text for this purpose. For a quarter of a century, Falconer's Introduction to Quantitative Genetics has been the standard, and excellent, text in that subject. For my purposes, however, this text is not sufficiently detailed in the population genetics basis for quantitative theory. A number of good texts in population genetics are available, of which Li's First Course in Population Genetics is didactically the best. But these texts are directed toward the genetics of natural populations, rather than domestic populations, breeding under human control. They also tend to treat quantitative genetics gingerly, if at all. I have therefore developed the present text from my teaching notes. The chapters of this book are labeled "Lectures". Each is intended to correspond approximately to the amount of material which can be covered in a 50-minute lecture. Divisions are, of course, dictated by the natural divisions of the subject matter, and the lectures are therefore not of uniform length. Nevertheless, in so far as possible, an attempt has been made to make the average length a lecture's worth.

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Content:
Front Matter....Pages I-X
Front Matter....Pages 1-1
The Hardy-Weinberg Law....Pages 2-7
Conditions for Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium....Pages 8-11
Applications of the Hardy-Weinberg Law....Pages 12-17
Snyder’s Ratios....Pages 18-22
Front Matter....Pages 23-23
Multiple Alleles....Pages 24-26
Separate Sexes....Pages 27-30
Sex Linkage....Pages 31-34
Other Phenomena Associated with Sex....Pages 35-40
Linkage....Pages 41-47
Recombination Equilibrium....Pages 48-52
Polyploidy....Pages 53-56
Front Matter....Pages 57-57
Selection....Pages 58-63
The General Selection Equation....Pages 64-68
Equilibrium under Selection....Pages 69-73
Mutation....Pages 74-78
Interaction of Mutation with Selection....Pages 79-82
Migration....Pages 83-87
Front Matter....Pages 89-89
The Finite Population Model....Pages 90-91
Inbreeding....Pages 92-95
The Development of Inbreeding....Pages 96-99
Front Matter....Pages 89-89
Genic Drift....Pages 100-103
Genotypic Drift....Pages 104-106
Effective Breeding Size....Pages 107-112
Interaction of Inbreeding with Systematic Forces....Pages 113-115
Coancestry....Pages 116-119
Applications of Coancestry....Pages 120-122
Tabular Calculation of Coancestry....Pages 123-127
Path Calculation of F....Pages 128-130
Systematic Inbreeding....Pages 131-136
Assortative Mating....Pages 137-140
Front Matter....Pages 141-141
Metric Traits....Pages 142-147
Evidence for the Theory of Metric Inheritance....Pages 148-150
Phenotypic Value....Pages 151-153
The Single Locus Model....Pages 154-159
Breeding Values....Pages 160-163
Dominance Deviations....Pages 164-168
Multiple Loci....Pages 169-171
Causal Components of Variance....Pages 172-175
Analytical Components....Pages 176-182
Heritability....Pages 183-186
Front Matter....Pages 141-141
Realized Heritability....Pages 187-191
Environmental Variance....Pages 192-196
Repeatability....Pages 197-198
Back Matter....Pages 199-202
....Pages 203-264