Job Title: PhD Student
Location: Otago University
Supervisor and budget source: A/Prof Hamish Spencer, Funded by Marsden, the University of Otago and the AWC
Project: 4

 

Frequency-dependent Selection and Genetic Variation

Natural populations of plants and animals contain large amounts of genetic variation. Where does this variation come from? Why does it stay? I am investigating the potential of frequency-dependent selection to maintain genetic variation in populations. Frequency-dependent selection occurs when the fitness of a genotype is determined by its relative abundance in its population. Intuitively, it seems frequency dependent selection that favours rarity should maintain variation. My goal is to test how well this prediction actually works when examined mathematically, using mainly numerical models.

	Publications Trotter, M.V., and Spencer, H.G. (2007). Frequency-Dependent Selection and the Maintenance of Genetic Variation: Exploring the Parameter Space of the Multiallelic Pairwise Interaction Model. Genetics 176: 1729–1740