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Direct and indirect assortative mating: a multivariate approach to plant flowering schedules
Author(s) -
WEIS ARTHUR E.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
journal of evolutionary biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.289
H-Index - 128
eISSN - 1420-9101
pISSN - 1010-061X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1420-9101.2005.00891.x
Subject(s) - assortative mating , biology , trait , mating , pollen , evolutionary biology , genetics , botany , computer science , programming language
This paper develops methods to partition the phenotypic correlation between mates for a focal trait – the standard measure for assortative mating – into a direct component and additional indirect components. Indirect assortative mating occurs when a nonassorting trait is correlated within individuals to a directly assorting trait. Direct and indirect assortative mating is assessed for flowering phenology in Brassica rapa . The flowering time of pollen recipients (mothers) was strongly correlated ( ρ = 0.67) to that of potential pollen donors (fathers). Similarly, recipients and donors were correlated for duration of their flowering periods ( ρ = 0.32) and stem diameters ( ρ = 0.52). A partitioning of between‐mate correlations revealed direct assortative mating for flowering time and period duration. However, assortment for stem diameter is explained solely through its correlation to flowering time. Examination of standard quantitative genetic theory shows that indirect assortative mating inflates genetic variance in a focal trait and the genetic covariance between focal and phenotypically correlated traits.