The distribution of allelic effects under mutation and selection

The Price (1970, 1972) equation is applied to the problem of describing the changes in the moments of allelic effects caused by selection, mutation and recombination at loci governing a quantitative genetic character. For comparable assumptions the resulting equations are the same as those obtained by different means by Barton & Turelli (1987; Turelli & Barton, 1989). The Price equation provides a natural framework within which to examine certain kinds of non-additive allelic effects, recombination and assortative mating. The use of the Price equation is illustrated by finding the equilibrium genetic variance under multiplicative dominance and epistasis and under assortative mating at an additive locus. The limitations of the use of recursion equations for the moments of allelic effects are also discussed.