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Inferring relative levels of genetic variability in fossils: the link between heterozygosity and fluctuating asymmetry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2016

A. Richard Palmer
A. Richard Palmer*
Affiliation:
Department of Zoology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2E9 and Bamfield Marine Station, Bamfield, British Columbia V0R 1B0, CANADA
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Extract

The lack of tools for teasing genetic information out of the fossil record has been a source of frustration to both neontologists and paleontologists, both of whom would like to know more about what was happening genetically in association with such evolutionarily significant events as cladogenesis and extinction. The dearth of such information has been a factor contributing to the current schism between population geneticists and paleontologists over interpretations of historical patterns of evolution (Gould and Eldredge 1977; Stanley 1979; Charlesworth et al. 1982; Levinton 1983; Turner 1983), a schism which seems unbridgeable without at least some insight into paleontological patterns of genetic variation. Several recent papers, however, have documented a negative correlation between the level of fluctuating asymmetry (small, random, right-left differences between otherwise bilaterally symmetrical characters) and the level of heterozygosity in a variety of organisms. Whatever its underlying cause may be, this correlation raises a flicker of hope that a tool may exist for inferring whether some populations of fossil taxa were more variable genetically than others.

Type
Current Happenings
Information
Paleobiology , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , Winter 1986 , pp. 1 - 5
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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