We discuss implications of these findings for the evolutionary causes and consequences of trait correlations.
Thinking about the evolutionary causes and consequences of trait correlations has been dominated by quantitative genetics theory that is focused on hypothetical loci.
Parasitoids are rapidly becoming model systems for studying the evolutionary and ecological consequences of trait regression.
Silver birch (Betula pendula Roth) is an ideal tree species in which to examine the mechanisms of plant-herbivore interactions and the community-level consequences of trait variation, because the species shows remarkable genetic variation in its resistance to herbivores.
According to this analysis there is no such thing as biologically independent non-genetic inheritance, all extrinsic inheritance is a consequence of traits and dispositions that are intrinsic to an organism and intrinsic design can only be explained through neo-Darwinism.
For example, native species often compare poorly with introduced species never before exposed to the native environment (Goodenough 2010), and many immigrant species are exceptionally well adapted to their new environments as a consequence of traits that evolved elsewhere (Mack 2003).
However, mutations have also occurred, which are undirected (i.e., they occur at random in terms of the consequences of changing traits), leading to both lighter and darker offspring in Generation 2 as compared to their parents in Generation 1.
Increasingly, the use of GM crops will require research agronomists, ecologists, farmers and policy makers alike to take more of a systems perspective which considers the broader evolutionary consequences of the traits in question.
Despite the attention for sexual conflict in hermaphrodite mating systems, data on the costs of expression of antagonistic traits is rare (or involved the concurrent elimination of both sexual functions [ 27]), although several authors point out that such data would be essential for determining the evolutionary consequences of antagonistic traits [ 4, 28, 29].
A direct consequentialist about virtues holds that the moral qualities of a character trait (such as whether or not it is a moral virtue) depend on the consequences of that trait (Driver 2001a, Hurka 2001, Jamieson 2005, Bradley 2005).
