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14. Measuring Selection for Quantitative Traits in Human Populations

Chapter of: Human Evolutionary Demography(pp. 329–344)

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Metadata
Title14. Measuring Selection for Quantitative Traits in Human Populations
ContributorJacob A Moorad(author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0251.14
Landing pagehttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0251/chapters/10.11647/obp.0251.14
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
CopyrightJacob A Moorad
PublisherOpen Book Publishers
Published on2024-06-14
Long abstractQuantitative genetics offers a powerful suite of statistical approaches designed to describe and predict rates of phenotypic evolution. Its origin lies at the reconciliation of Mendelian and Biometric Genetics and Darwin’s Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection that occurred in the early 20th century. Quantitative genetics has since played a major role in the science of animal and plant improvement since the mid-20th century and in the study of evolution since the 1970s and 80s. The goal of this chapter is to introduce this perspective to demographers, provide guidance on methods intended to characterize natural selection on traits of interest, and to illustrate the flexibility of this approach to deal with complications that are inherent to the study of human populations, such as overlapping generations and social interactions.
Page rangepp. 329–344
Print length16 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Contributors

Jacob A Moorad

(author)
Senior Lecturer in Quantitative Genetics at University of Edinburgh
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1222-5525
https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/persons/jacob-moorad

Jacob Moorad is a Senior Lecturer in Quantitative Genetics at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests include life history evolution, with emphases on ageing and social interactions, and his work involves laboratory and wild populations of insects, historical human populations, and the development of evolutionary theory.

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