Deleterious mutations and the genetic variance of male fitness components in Mimulus guttatus

Kelly, J. K.

Deleterious mutations are relevant to a broad range of questions in genetics and evolutionary biology. I present an application of the "biometric method" for estimating mutational parameters for male fitness characters of the yellow monkeyflower, Mimulus guttatus. The biometric method rests on two critical assumptions. The first is that experimental inbreeding changes genotype frequencies without changing allele frequencies; i.e., there is no genetic purging during the experiment.