In response to Felsenstein/Moran:
This thread is getting interesting. Let's ignore earlier attacks on verbal
arguments by Eldredge and Dawkins, which are bound to (and do) fall apart under
close scrutiny. Also, Felsenstein's specificity about sex as
"outcrossing-plus-recombination" (as opposed to concerns over ploidy and two
sexes) is useful.
Precise work with two-locus recombination modifier models has led to
Felsenstein's quote that "modifiers will be selected to eliminate
recombination". However, my interpretation of recent work by Charlesworth,
Hudson, and others on models to explain why variation is low in regions of low
recombination is that these (many-locus) models will in the end offer a very
good explanation for outcrossing-plus-recombination. That is, the lower the
recombination, the larger the regions of the chromosome which behave as
non-recombining units, and the more these units have a lower localized
effective population size and tend to suffer from Muller's ratchet effects.
Any comments by someone working with these models?
David Pollock
Laboratory of Mathematical Biology
National Institute for Medical Research
The Ridgeway, Mill Hill, London, NW7 1AA U.K.
d-polloc at nimr.mrc.ac.uk
--
David D. Pollock
Laboratory of Mathematical Biology
National Institute for Medical Research
The Ridgeway, Mill Hill, London, NW7 1AA U.K.
d-polloc at nimr.mrc.ac.uk
0181-959-3666 ext. 2396 (+44-181-959-3666)
Fax: 0181-913-8545
