Description
Book SynopsisQuantitative genetics is the study of continuously varying traits which make up the majority of biological attributes of evolutionary and commercial interest. This book provides a much-needed up-to-date, in-depth yet accessible text for the field. In lucid language, the author guides readers through the main concepts of population and quantitative genetics and their applications. It is written to be approachable to even those without a strong mathematical background, including applied examples, a glossary of key terms, and problems and solutions to support students in grasping important theoretical developments and their relevance to real-world biology. An engaging, must-have textbook for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students. Given its applied focus, it also equips researchers in genetics, genomics, evolutionary biology, animal and plant breeding, and conservation genetics with the understanding and tools for genetic improvement, comprehension of the genetic basis of human
Trade Review'Quantitative genetics as a scientific discipline isn't dead just yet, despite predictions of its demise over many decades. In fact, it is very much alive in the genomics era, across a wide range of disciplines, including plant and animal breeding, evolutionary genetics and human (medical) genetics. Armando Caballero's timely textbook, a translation and update from his Spanish version, combines a description of the theory and methods underlying quantitative trait variation in populations with data examples and applications from modern genome technologies. It is an excellent introduction to the field, and demonstrates once again how population and quantitative genetics theory has stood the test of time and is highly relevant today.' Peter M. Visscher, University of Queensland
'Armando Caballero's work is a masterful tour through both evolutionary and applied quantitative genetics. It provides a fruitful and unusual blend of population and quantitative genetics, and it will be extremely useful for anyone who wants to learn more about either of these fields.' Michael Whitlock, University of British Columbia
'As the field within genetics having arguably the deepest history, quantitative genetics continues as a lively endeavour advancing understanding of the inheritance and change of traits that are continuous in their distributions and complex in the genetic and environmental influences on them. I welcome Caballero's text for new generations of students coming up to speed in this important and challenging field. The problems and questions concluding each chapter will especially aid them in testing their growing understanding. This text will also serve as a valuable resource for established practitioners of quantitative genetics.' Ruth G. Shaw, University of Minnesota
Table of ContentsPreface; Preface to the Spanish version; 1. Continuous variation; 2. Forces of change in the allele frequencies; 3. Components of phenotypic values and variances; 4. Inbreeding and coancestry; 5. Effective population size; 6. Estimation of genetic values, variances and covariances; 7. Mutation; 8. Consequences of inbreeding; 9. Artificial selection; 10. Natural selection; 11. Genomic analysis of quantitative traits; Solution to the problems and self-assessment questions; Glossary; References; Index.
