The Geometry of Genetic Limits to Evolutionary Change (2010-2018)

At the core of evolutionary biology lie two observations from the natural world that together form one of the great scientific contradictions; substantial genetic variation is maintained in natural populations in the presence of strong selection. The existence of multivariate genetic constraints may resolve the conflict between these two fundamental observations, but systematic manipulative evidence for the existence of these constraints is lacking. We propose a novel way of fully characterising the geometric distribution of genetic variance across the entire phenotypic space for a set of traits, giving a clear picture for the first time of the level of genetic constraint in all phenotypic directions.