Rethinking heredity, again

Bonduriansky, Russell

doi:10.1016/j.tree.2012.02.003

Cited by 172 publications

(149 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…It is important to distinguish fixed heterogeneity as it is used here-that is, as the repeatability of individual performance-from other sources of variation that are not due to the properties of individuals (e.g., climatic variations among years). Indeed, only fixed differences among individuals can be the target of selection and allow for adaptation, provided that these fixed differences are passed on to the next generation-be it through genes (Keller and Waller 2002), philopatry (Schauber et al 2007), or other processes (Bonduriansky 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Successful by Chance? The Power of Mixed Models and Neutral Simulations for the Detection of Individual Fixed Heterogeneity in Fitness Components

Bonnet

Postma

2016

The American Naturalist

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Heterogeneity in fitness components consists of fixed heterogeneity due to latent differences fixed throughout life (e.g., genetic variation) and dynamic heterogeneity generated by stochastic variation. Their relative magnitude is crucial for evolutionary processes, as only the former may allow for adaptation. However, the importance of fixed heterogeneity in small populations has recently been questioned. Using neutral simulations (NS), several studies failed to detect fixed heterogeneity, thus challenging previous results from mixed models (MM). To understand the causes of this discrepancy, we estimate the statistical power and false positive rate of both methods and apply them to empirical data from a wild rodent population. While MM show high false-positive rates if confounding factors are not accounted for, they have high statistical power to detect real fixed heterogeneity. In contrast, NS are also subject to high false-positive rates but always have low power. Indeed, MM analyses of the rodent population data show significant fixed heterogeneity in reproductive success, whereas NS analyses do not. We suggest that fixed heterogeneity may be more common than is suggested by NS and that NS are useful only if more powerful methods are not applicable and if they are complemented by a power analysis. Online enhancements: appendixes. Dryad data: http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.3cb61.abstract: Heterogeneity in fitness components consists of fixed heterogeneity due to latent differences fixed throughout life (e.g., genetic variation) and dynamic heterogeneity generated by stochastic variation. Their relative magnitude is crucial for evolutionary processes, as only the former may allow for adaptation. However, the importance of fixed heterogeneity in small populations has recently been questioned. Using neutral simulations (NS), several studies failed to detect fixed heterogeneity, thus challenging previous results from mixed models (MM). To understand the causes of this discrepancy, we estimate the statistical power and false positive rate of both methods and apply them to empirical data from a wild rodent population. While MM show high false-positive rates if confounding factors are not accounted for, they have high statistical power to detect real fixed heterogeneity. In contrast, NS are also subject to high false-positive rates but always have low power. Indeed, MM analyses of the rodent population data show significant fixed heterogeneity in reproductive success, whereas NS analyses do not. We suggest that fixed heterogeneity may be more common than is suggested by NS and that NS are useful only if more powerful methods are not applicable and if they are complemented by a power analysis.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Successful by Chance? The Power of Mixed Models and Neutral Simulations for the Detection of Individual Fixed Heterogeneity in Fitness Components

Bonnet

Postma

2016

The American Naturalist

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“…Such estimates may thus reflect genetic variation among focal colonies but also any environmental variation due to the conditions experienced prior to our experiment (which we made effort to control) or parental effects (which we could not). There is growing awareness that both sources of variation may contribute to microevolutionary processes (Day and Bonduriansky 2011;Bonduriansky 2012), but disentangling them will require complex breeding designs (e.g., Bonduriansky et al 2012) that may prove challenging to implement for organisms with similar reproductive biology to Hippopodina.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Faster Is Not Always Better: Selection on Growth Rate Fluctuates across Life History and Environments

Monro

Marshall²

2014

The American Naturalist

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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. abstract: Growth rate is increasingly recognized as a key life-history trait that may affect fitness directly rather than evolve as a byproduct of selection on size or age. An ongoing challenge is to explain the abundant levels of phenotypic and genetic variation in growth rates often seen in natural populations, despite what is expected to be consistently strong selection on this trait. Such a paradox suggests limits to how contemporary growth rates evolve. We explored limits arising from variation in selection, based on selection differentials for age-specific growth rates expressed under different ecological conditions. We present results from a field experiment that measured growth rates and reproductive output in wild individuals of a colonial marine invertebrate (Hippopodina iririkiensis), replicated within and across the natural range of succession in its local community. Colony growth rates varied phenotypically throughout this range, but not all such variation was available for selection, nor was it always targeted by selection as expected. While the maintenance of both phenotypic and genetic variation in growth rate is often attributed to costs of growing rapidly, our study highlights the potential for fluctuating selection pressures throughout the life history and across environments to play an important role in this process.

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“…Hard heredity, or the modern notion of heredity (Johannsen, 1911), is the notion that heredity is fixed at birth and is not affected directly by changes in the environment (Bonduriansky, 2012). It was the making of this notion that created the epistemic space within which the Mendelian notion of a particulate and stable (unchangeable) hereditary material (later christened the gene) could be situated and Mendel "rediscovered. "…”

Section: The Making Of Hard Heredity In the Late Nineteenth Centurymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Transcendence of the Social: Durkheim, Weismann and the Purification of Sociology

Meloni¹

2018

The Palgrave Handbook of Biology and Society

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Building on Fox Keller's acute genealogy of the nature-nurture opposition as located in a certain specific social, cultural, and political history in the late nineteenth century (2010), in this paper, I address a parallel problem: the making of a really modern (i.e., non-biological) sociology nearly at the same time as the "hard disjunction" (Keller, 2010) between heredity and the environment, nature and nurture, was made. I argue rather provocatively that traces of borrowing from hard heredity to sociology can be seen in Durkheim's strategic usage of Weismann to destroy Lamarckian sociology. The transcendence of the social in Durkheim is entirely isomorphic to Weismann's transcendence of the germ plasm: in both cases, they aimed to construct objective realities, radically independent and exterior from individual tendencies and peculiarities. Weismann offered Durkheim an important scientific companion to make boundaries between sociology and biology. In a Latourian sense (Latour, 1993), the purification strategy of Durkheim was actually helped by a hybridization with Weismann's biology. In conclusion, by taking Weismann as an anticipator of the genetics revolution a few years later, I argue for a profound complicity between twentieth century non-biological sociology and genetics. They both made space for a neat distinction between biological heredity and sociocultural transmission, heredity, and heritage. If sociology and genetics thought of themselves as rivals and even enemies in explaining social facts, they should reconsider their positions.

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Rethinking heredity, again

Cited by 172 publications

References 44 publications

Successful by Chance? The Power of Mixed Models and Neutral Simulations for the Detection of Individual Fixed Heterogeneity in Fitness Components

Successful by Chance? The Power of Mixed Models and Neutral Simulations for the Detection of Individual Fixed Heterogeneity in Fitness Components

Faster Is Not Always Better: Selection on Growth Rate Fluctuates across Life History and Environments

The Transcendence of the Social: Durkheim, Weismann and the Purification of Sociology

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