Natural Selection in the Wild

John A. Endler

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780691083872
  9780691083865
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691209517
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Evolution
• Index: Biological Sciences

Natural selection is an immense and important subject, yet there have been few attempts to summarize its effects on natural populations, and fewer still which discuss the problems of working with natural selection in the wild. These are the purposes of John Endler's book. In it, he discusses the methods and problems involved in the demonstration and measurement of natural selection, presents the critical evidence for its existence, and places it in an evolutionary perspective.


Professor Endler finds that there are a remarkable number of direct demonstrations of selection in a wide variety of animals and plants. The distribution of observed magnitudes of selection in natural populations is surprisingly broad, and it overlaps extensively the range of values found in artificial selection. He argues that the common assumption that selection is usually weak in natural populations is no longer tenable, but that natural selection is only one component of the process of evolution; natural selection can explain the change of frequencies of variants, but not their origins.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Philosophical Comments
• 3. Methods for the Detection of Natural Selection in the Wild
• 4. Problems in Detecting Natural Selection
• 5. Direct Demonstrations of Natural Selection in the Wild
• 6. Estimating Selection Coefficients and Differentials
• 7. Distribution of Selection Coefficients and Differentials in Natural Populations
• 8. The Importance of Natural Selection
• Appendix 1. Multiple Regression and the Estimation of Selection Differentials
• Appendix 2. Comparisons between Selection Differentials and Regression Coefficients Using Simulated Data of Selection with Known Properties
• References
• Species Index
• Subject Index