Modern spandrels: the roles of genetic drift, gene flow and natural selection in the evolution of parallel clines.

ABSTRACT: Urban environments offer the opportunity to study the role of adaptive and non-adaptive evolutionary processes on an unprecedented scale. While the presence of parallel clines in heritable phenotypic traits is often considered strong evidence for the role of natural selection, non-adaptive evolutionary processes can also generate clines, and this may be more likely when traits have a non-additive genetic basis due to epistasis. In this paper, we use spatially explicit simulations modelled according to the cyanogenesis (hydrogen cyanide, HCN) polymorphism in white clover (Trifolium repens) to examine the formation of phenotypic clines along urbanization gradients under varying levels of drift, gene flow and selection. HCN results from an epistatic interaction between two Mendelian-in

SUBMITTER: Santangelo JS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5966599 | biostudies-literature | 2018 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature