Everything About ___
Live briefing

Everything about Directional selection

Type of genetic selection favoring one extreme phenotype

In population genetics, directional selection is a mode of natural selection in which individuals with a trait at one extreme of a phenotypic distribution have better fitness than individuals with intermediate or opposite extreme phenotypes. Over time, the allele frequencies, and consequently the population mean for the trait, shift consistently in the direction of the extreme phenotype with greater fitness. An example is the evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria – the introduction of a strong selective pressure selects resistant strains of bacteria, thereby shifting allele frequencies toward phenotypes with strong resistance to the antibiotic. Wikipedia →

🧭 Start here: a 6-step reading path

  1. Read the overview: Directional selectionA 5-minute orientation
  2. Skim a recent paper: Bi-Directional Feature Fixation-Based Particle Swarm Optimization for Large-Scale Feature SelectionInfluential work since 2022
  3. Pick up a classic book: Essentials of Personnel Assessment and SelectionThe most-reprinted book on the subject
  4. Read the landmark paper: COMPARING STRENGTHS OF DIRECTIONAL SELECTION: HOW STRONG IS STRONG?Cited 301 times
  5. Go sideways: Quantitative trait locusA closely related topic
  6. Go sideways: Population geneticsA closely related topic

📖 Definitions

Noun An incidence of natural selection where species survive by evolving new characters or modifying old characters.

🗂️ The subject at a glance

  1. Darwinian origins of the concept
  2. Genetic basis – types of selection and limits
  3. Examples
  4. Detection methods

🏆 Landmark papers (most cited)

🆕 Influential since 2022

📚 Books worth reading

Ranked by number of editions on Open Library, a rough measure of how lasting a book is.

🔗 Related topics