Abstract
Differentiating in between adaptive and non adaptive causes of population differentiation in phenotypic traits of ecological interest remains often a challenge for empirical studies of natural populations. I will review a series of yet unpublished empirical studies which have utilized newly developed quantitative genetic approach to differentiate in between natural selection and genetic drift as a cause of population differentiation. Apart from of aiming to illustrate the general utility of this approach, I hope introduce couple of illuminating empirical case-studies where footprints of adaptive differentiation can be recovered in spite of strong influence of genetic drift and gene flow, respectively. There is certain - yet undefined - probability that my talk takes a totally different path than that depicted in this abstract.
Speaker: Juha Merilä
Visiting professor from the University of Helsinki