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Summary: Environmental duress and epistasis:
how does stress affect the strength
of selection on new mutations?
Aneil F. Agrawal1
and Michael C. Whitlock2
1
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, 25 Willcocks Street, Toronto, ON, Canada M5S 3B2
2
Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z4
To an evolutionary geneticist, the most important prop-
erty of a new mutation is its effect on fitness. Stress is a
reduction in fitness that can also alter the selection on
new mutations. Although the effects of environmental
and genetic stresses are typically studied separately, it is
useful to consider them from the same perspective. Here
we evaluate the common perception that stress increases
selection. We consider various conceptual paradigms for
thinking about selection and stress, and then review the
empirical data. We reject the notion that stress typically
increases selection. Instead, we find that different types
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