Re: Holloway/Morgan
Harry Erwin (herwin@gmu.edu)
Sun, 30 Jul 1995 16:50:05 -0400
In article <204438561wnr@desco.demon.co.uk>, Elaine@desco.demon.co.uk wrote:
> Many thanks to Guy Hoelzer for clarifying the position about genetic
> drift. I apologise for being dismissive about the paper on drift and
> brain growth without having read it (Always a mistake!) Can anyone give
> me a reference to it please?
>
Possibly the most accessible reference is John Maynard Smith, Evolutionary
Genetics, Oxford, 1989, 144ff. How rapidly will heterozygosity be lost
from a fertile adult population of size N? Answer: the probability of
heterozygosity drops by about (2N-1)/(2N) per generation just based on
drift. Eventually the population will reach stability with the probability
of gene loss equalling the probability of mutation. The time for a
population to reach this equilibrium is about N generations. Hence a
highly homozygous population must have gone through a recent population
bottleneck.
--
Harry Erwin
Internet: herwin@gmu.edu
Home Page: http://osf1.gmu.edu/~herwin (try again if necessary)
PhD student in comp neurosci: "Glitches happen" & "Meaning is emotional"
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