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Michael Morrissey

Publications and source records attributed to Michael Morrissey.

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Analytical results for directional and quadratic selection gradients for log-linear models of fitness functions

O_LIEstablished methods for inference about selection gradients involve least-squares regression of fitness on phenotype. While these methods are simple and may generally be quite robust, they do not account well for distributions of fitness.\nC_LIO_LISome progress has previously been made in relating inferences about trait-fitness relationships from generalised linear models to selection gradients in the formal quantitative genetic sense. These approaches involve numerical calculation of average derivatives of relative fitness with respect to phenotype.\nC_LIO_LIWe present analytical results expressing selection gradients as functions of the coefficients of generalised linear models for fitness in terms of traits. The analytical results allow calculation of univariate and multivariate directional, quadratic, and correlational selection gradients from log-linear and log-quadratic models.\nC_LIO_LIThe results should be quite generally applicable in selection analysis. They apply to any generalised linear model with a log link function. Furthermore, we show how they apply to some situations including inference of selection from (molecular) paternity data, capture-mark-recapture analysis, and survival analysis. Finally, the results may bridge some gaps between typical approaches in empirical and theoretical studies of natural selection.\nC_LI

Evolutionary Biology

General methods for evolutionary quantitative genetic inference from generalised mixed models.

Methods for inference and interpretation of evolutionary quantitative genetic parameters, and for prediction of the response to selection, are best developed for traits with normal distributions. Many traits of evolutionary interest, including many life history and behavioural traits, have inherently non-normal distributions. The generalised linear mixed model (GLMM) framework has become a widely used tool for estimating quantitative genetic parameters for non-normal traits. However, whereas GLMMs provide inference on a statistically-convenient latent scale, it is sometimes desirable to express quantitative genetic parameters on the scale upon which traits are expressed. The parameters of a fitted GLMMs, despite being on a latent scale, fully determine all quantities of potential interest on the scale on which traits are expressed. We provide expressions for deriving each of such quantities, including population means, phenotypic (co)variances, variance components including additive genetic (co)variances, and parameters such as heritability. We demonstrate that fixed effects have a strong impact on those parameters and show how to deal for this effect by averaging or integrating over fixed effects. The expressions require integration of quantities determined by the link function, over distributions of latent values. In general cases, the required integrals must be solved numerically, but efficient methods are available and we provide an implementation in an R package, QGglmm. We show that known formulae for quantities such as heritability of traits with Binomial and Poisson distributions are special cases of our expressions. Additionally, we show how fitted GLMM can be incorporated into existing methods for predicting evolutionary trajectories. We demonstrate the accuracy of the resulting method for evolutionary prediction by simulation, and apply our approach to data from a wild pedigreed vertebrate population.

Evolutionary Biology