Whether selection on height acts directly or indirectly, the high heritability of height (around 0.8; Visscher et al. 2006) makes it likely that phenotypic selection on height directly affects the many genes coding for height.
The change in total selection on height was due to a shift from a negative to a positive relationship between height and adult fertility, which ran counter to a slight decrease in the positive relationship between height and early survival (see Table 1 for details).
In the United States, selection for height appears to have occurred several centuries ago, leading to taller men, and then it stopped.
Selection on height is therefore sexually antagonistic.
We show how the demographic transition influenced directional selection on height and body mass index (BMI).
Second, we measured how selection on height and BMI changed across the demographic transition.
We observed a shift across the demographic transition from negative to positive selection on height coupled with a shift from positive to negative selection on BMI.
Although selection for height apparently has been accompanied by an increased prevalence of RLN, the genetic basis for this is currently unknown.
Furthermore, two studies conclude that their data show stabilising selection for height, without testing this statistically (Mueller et al. 1981; Goldstein and Kobyliansky 1984).
Together, linear trends in variance in relative total fitness and "time" accounted for 10% of interannual variation in total linear selection on height with only 2%4%% explained by each factor separately (controlling for the other, i.e., partial correlation).
Hence, selection for height growth at the present intensities did not appear to compromise background genetic diversity but, as predicted by theory, effects were detected at a few gene SNPs harboring intermediate allele frequencies.
