Complexity and Diversity

Abstract

A Little Selection for a Lot of Rarity Studies on how selection works have tended to focus on the effect of a single trait. This necessarily means that rare alleles that can be acted on by selection appear to experience high levels of frequency-dependence selection. However, selection may act on multiple traits at any one time. Doebeli and Ispolatov (p. 494 ) present a theoretical framework examining how multiple rare traits can persist and potentially drive speciation. The s show that only low levels of frequency-dependent selection are needed to explain the observed high levels of allelic diversity in nature.