Université de Fribourg

The evolutionary genetics of canalization

Flatt, Thomas

In: The Quarterly Review of Biology, 2005, vol. 80, no. 3, p. 287-316

Evolutionary genetics has recently made enormous progress in understanding how genetic variation maps into phenotypic variation. However, why some traits are phenotypically invariant despite apparent genetic and environmental changes has remained a major puzzle. In the 1940s, Conrad Hal Waddington coined the concept and term “canalization” to describe the robustness of phenotypes to...

Université de Fribourg

Phenotypic variation in an oviparous montane lizard (Bassiana duperreyi): the effects of thermal and hydric incubation environments

Flatt, Thomas ; Shine, Richard ; Borges-Landaez, Pedro A. ; Downes, Sharon J.

In: Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2001, vol. 74, no. 3, p. 339-350

Recent studies have shown that incubation temperatures can profoundly affect the phenotypes of hatchling lizards, but the effects of hydric incubation environments remain controversial.We examined incubation-induced phenotypic variation in Bassiana duperreyi (Gray, 1938; Sauria: Scincidae), an oviparous montane lizard from south-eastern Australia. We incubated eggs from this species in four...