Equation 5 · Comparing the Main Approaches to Evolutionary Biology and Ecology
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The equation exposes the model’s real content: selection is strongest while the favored allele is at intermediate frequency, where is largest, and weakens automatically as the allele nears fixation or loss, purely from the algebra of the denominator — a pattern of decelerating change that shows up empirically in both the Grants’ beak-size tracking and the LTEE’s fitness trajectories, even though the two systems differ in essentially everything else about how the selection coefficient s itself is generated.
Sources cited in the article section
- [3] E. coli long-term evolution experiment ↗
- [4] Historical contingency and the evolution of a key innovation in an experimental population of Escherichia coli ↗
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