Abstract
Ecologists and evolutionary biologists routinely estimate selection gradients. Most researchers seek to quantify selection on individual phenotypes, regardless of whether fixed or repeatedly expressed traits are studied. Selection gradients estimated to address such questions are attenuated unless analyses account for measurement error and biological sources of within-individual variation. Estimates of standardized selection gradients published in Evolution between 2010 and 2019 were primarily based on traits measured once (59% of 325 estimates). We show that those are attenuated: bias increases with decreasing repeatability but differently for linear versus nonlinear gradients. Others derived individual-mean trait values prior to analyses (41%), typically using few repeats per individual, which does not remove bias. We evaluated three solutions, all requiring repeated measures: (i) correcting gradients derived from classic models using estimates of trait correlations and repeatabilities, (ii) multivariate mixed-effects models, previously used for estimating linear gradients (seven estimates, 2%), which we expand to nonlinear analyses, and (iii) errors-in-variables models that account for within-individual variance, and are rarely used in selection studies. All approaches produced accurate estimates regardless of repeatability and type of gradient, however, errors-in-variables models produced more precise estimates and may thus be preferable.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2-23-2021
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1111/evo.14198
Funding Information
NJD was supported by the German Science Foundation (grant no. DI 1694/1-1), YA-A by the Research Council of Norway (Centres of Excellence funding scheme; grant no. 223257), and DFW by the U.S. National Science Foundation (grant no. IOS-1656212) and the University of Kentucky.
Repository Citation
Dingemanse, Niels Jeroen; Araya-Ajoy, Yimen G.; and Westneat, David F., "Most Published Selection Gradients Are Underestimated: Why This Is and How to Fix It" (2021). Biology Faculty Publications. 221.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/biology_facpub/221
Tables S1 and S7; figure S3
evo14198-sup-0008-texts8.pdf (324 kB)
Supporting information
Notes/Citation Information
Published in Evolution, v. 75, issue 4.
© 2021 The Authors
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.