Ecological Genetics

This book covers basic concepts in population and quantitative genetics, including measuring selection on phenotypic traits. The emphasis is on material applicable to field studies of evolution focusing on ecologically important traits. Topics addressed are critical for training students in ecology, evolution, conservation biology, agriculture, forestry, and wildlife management. Many texts in this field are too complex and mathematical to allow the average beginning student to readily grasp the key concepts. A Primer of Ecological Genetics, in contrast, employs mathematics and statistics-fully explained, but at a less advanced level-as tools to improve understanding of biological principles. The main goal is to enable students to understand the concepts well enough that they can gain entry into the primary literature. Integration of the different chapters of the book shows students how diverse concepts relate to each other.

Ecological Genetics addresses the fundamental problems of which of the many molecular markers should be used and how the resulting data should be analysed in clear, accessible language, suitable for upper-level undergraduates through to research-level professionals. A very accessible straightforward text to deal with this difficult topic - applying modern molecular techniques to ecological processes. Written by active researchers and teachers within the field. There will be an accompanying web site managed by the authors, comprising of worked examples, test data sets and hyperlinks to relevant web pages.

Ecological genetics describes the experimental study of evolution and adaptation carried out by means of combined fieldwork and laboratory genetics, a technique which has developed over some forty years and is attracting an increasing number of scientists. The author has developed principles, illustrated by examples drawn from both zoology and botany, rather than produced a compendium of available information. This fourth edition is again extended and brought up to date so as to incorporate work carried out during the last four years. There has been much new research in the fields of mimicry and melanism and it is of course the chapters on these topics which have undergone the most extensive revision. The list of references has been greatly extended.

Traditionally, studies in ecological genetics have involved both field observations and laboratory genetic analyses. Comparisons and cor relations between these two kinds of data have provided valuable in formation on the genetic strategies behind the evolutionary adapta tions of species and their component local populations. Indeed, much of our current understanding of the dynamics of evolutionary pro cesses has come fro~ syntheses of ecological and genetic information. Since the recent discovery of abundant markers in the form of protein polymorphisms, scientific interest in the connections between genetics and ecology has quickened considerably. This volume contains the proceedings of the Society for the Study of Evolution's symposium, Genetics and Ecology: The Interface, held at Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York, June 12-15, 1977. This particular topic was selected because of a general feeling that a significant integration of genetics and ecology has developed in the last decade or so. Host ecologists no longer believe that each species has a characteristic and constant birth, death, and develonment rate, habitat preference, and so on, but that these para~eters vary a~ong populations and are at least partially under genetic control and sub ject to natural selection. Similarly, few population geneticists still view any species as infinitely large, panmictic, constant in numbers, and distributed evenly throughout its range.

This book describes the experimental study of evolution and adaptation, carried out by means of combined field-work and laboratory genetics. That technique has been developed during the last forty years or so by my colleagues and myself, and by a small but increasing number of geneticists throughout the world. In discussing what has been achieved by these means many relevant pieces of work familiar to me have been omitted, while doubtless there are others that have escaped my attention. To those who have thus laboured without recognition here, I offer my apologies. Yet I would not include further examples were I writing again, and this for two reasons. First, my aim is not to produce a com pendium in the German fashion, for I have endeavoured to develop principles with enough instances to illustrate them but no more. Secondly, this book is in danger of becoming too long as it is: one which is in general consulted only in libraries, not read familiarly by students.

Researchers in the field of ecological genomics aim to determine how a genome or a population of genomes interacts with its environment across ecological and evolutionary timescales. Ecological genomics is trans-disciplinary by nature. Ecologists have turned to genomics to be able to elucidate the mechanistic bases of the biodiversity their research tries to understand. Genomicists have turned to ecology in order to better explain the functional cellular and molecular variation they observed in their model organisms. We provide an advanced-level book that covers this recent research and proposes future development for this field. A synthesis of the field of ecological genomics emerges from this volume. Ecological Genomics covers a wide array of organisms (microbes, plants and animals) in order to be able to identify central concepts that motivate and derive from recent investigations in different branches of the tree of life. Ecological Genomics covers 3 fields of research that have most benefited from the recent technological and conceptual developments in the field of ecological genomics: the study of life-history evolution and its impact of genome architectures; the study of the genomic bases of phenotypic plasticity and the study of the genomic bases of adaptation and speciation.

This volume represents work by five distinguished ecological geneticists, offering an up-to-date source for theoretical concepts and experiments in an exciting field. Combining ecological fieldwork and laboratory genetics, ecological genetics examines the adjustments and adaptations of wild populations to their environments. Articles focus on important interactions between genetics and population ecology, delving into issues like gene flow and migration, population differentiation, the maintenance of genetic variation, and the demographic and spatial structure of populations. The contributors--Janis Antonovics, Michael Lynch, Montgomery Slatkin, Joseph Travis, and Sara Via--emphasize the importance of population size and structure, interaction between local selection and genetic drift, and an expanded phenotype including quantitative as well as qualitative characters. This new form of ecological genetics focuses on large-scale geographic variation in demographic and genetic dynamics among small, partially isolated populations and will prove extremely valuable in natural resource management and in rare or endangered species conservation. Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.