[Effects of longterm selection on the genetic structure of populations--a simulation study. I. Simulation models and...

Monte Carlo method has been utilized to investigate responses to longterm selection. The simulation involves 3 gene effect models (additive, dominant, and over-dominant), two population sizes, three linkage intensities, and three heritability levels, thus making 54 combinations. For each combination, 5 replicate populations are selected over 49 consecutive non-overlapping generations. The results demonstrate that under all the gene effect models, linkage is important only in the case of small populations and intense linkage, when it reduces responses significantly due to hampering the fixation of favourable alleles and accelerating their loss. Linkage has no apparent effect if it is not very tight or if the population is large. Much greater responses are achieved in the large populations than in the small ones, especially for traits with low heritability. Among those discussed are problems of crossing selected lines to obtain extra responses, and discrepancy of some theoretic results on selection limits.