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Summary: vol. 158, no. 3 the american naturalist september 2001
On Indirect Genetic Effects in Structured Populations
Aneil F. Agrawal,* Edmund D. Brodie III,
and Michael J. Wade
Department of Biology and Center for the Integrative Study of
Animal Behavior, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana
47405-3700
Submitted October 16, 2000; Accepted April 30, 2001
abstract: Indirect genetic effects (IGEs) occur when the phenotype
of an individual, and possibly its fitness, depends, at least in part,
on the genes of its social partners. The effective result is that envi-
ronmental sources of phenotypic variance can themselves evolve.
Simple models have shown that IGEs can alter the rate and direction
of evolution for traits involved in interactions. Here we expand the
applicability of the theory of IGEs to evolution in metapopulations
by including nonlinear interactions between individuals and popu-
lation genetic structure. Although population subdivision alone gen-
erates some dramatic and nonintuitive evolutionary dynamics for
interacting phenotypes, the combination of nonlinear interactions
with subdivision reveals an even greater importance of IGEs. The
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