Thus, a signal of population differentiation in a gene involved in a constitutive process may have a greater impact than a strong signal of population differentiation in a gene involved in a more variable trait.
Finally, since the degree of sexual dichromatism is often used as a proxy for sexual selection we also tested the prediction that (c) sexually dimorphic traits should be more variable than monomorphic traits.
Clearly, more work is needed to be able to confirm that sexually selected colours are more variable than comparable traits, and we hope that the method and results we describe here may stimulate further research in this area.
The pathway of Asparagine N-Glycosylation is one of the few metabolic pathways where we can compare how selection acted both on genes involved in a essential process such as the control of protein folding, and on genes involved in a more geographically-variable traits, such as innate immunity and response to the environment.
When either measure of Ve was normalized by the mean trait value for each RI line background, the difference between the more variable and the invariant traits was striking (Fig. 3; compare left to right).
In fact, midpiece area in all populations was much more variable than the other traits, with CV's within males of 47.8 in the Pacific, 62.1 in the West Atlantic and 31.7 in the East Atlantic.
At a population level, work with Drosophila species suggests that populations of tropical species tend to have very limited genetic variation for cold tolerance or desiccation resistance, while those from temperate or arid species are much more variable for these same traits (Hoffmann 2010).
Mean local environmental conditions also affected trait variation; in most of the species both vegetative and reproductive traits were more variable in sites with higher nutrient contents and higher light availability.
In Brachypodium and Stachys both vegetative and reproductive traits were more variable in Freiburg.
It is thought that researchers have avoided females based on the idea that female traits are more variable than those of males because of cyclic variation in effects of ovarian hormones.
