Posts within the RSS feed will now be truncated. Since I occasionally write longer pieces, it is likely you’ll now have to “click through” to read the full post. If the ending of a post mystifies you, there is a good chance that it’s due to truncation, and not my being on some medications.
Finally, I feel guilty putting this post up without a great deal of content, so I’ll throw a thought out there triggered by discussion below on phenotypes in the Middle East: how many alleles which code for particular traits arose in the genetic background of population A only to move to fixation in population B? Lactase persistence in Europe may be a classic case of this, originating in Central Eurasian populations and later spreading to the Northwest European fringe, where the favored variant rose to near fixation. Here’s another possibility: the allele which codes for blue eyes in West Eurasian populations may have arisen outside of Europe, and moved into Europe through gene flow, and then been driven to fixation in the new environment. Often when people see someone with light eyes who is not European the …