Equation 6 · Part 3 · From Origins to Frontier: A History of Evolutionary Biology and Ecology
Symbol s
What this part means
the constant.
Its job in the formula
s is one of the signed contributions combined to compute the quantity on the left.
Full expression→Symbol s→Article meaning
Where the article explains it
This is a deliberately simplified model — haploid, one locus, constant s , no drift, no linkage — and real populations violate several of its assumptions routinely.
The passage around this formula
A basic case illustrates the kind of prediction this apparatus makes possible. For a single locus with two alleles under simple directional selection with selection coefficient s favoring an allele at frequency p , one classical discrete-generation recursion is . This is a deliberately simplified model — haploid, one locus, constant s , no drift, no linkage — and real populations violate several of its assumptions routinely. Its value is not as a literal forecast of any specific population but as a baseline against which departures (frequency-dependent selection, epistasis, drift-dominated dynamics in small populations) can be identified and measured.
Learn the underlying idea
A variable is a named place for a value. Its letter is a local label: x can mean position in one formula and a data point in another.
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Sources cited in the article section
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