Talk:Stabilizing selection

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isn´t purifying selection a form of directional selection, and thus cannot be the same as stabilizing selection?

Not as far as I can see in my text books on this topic. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 20:27, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Birth weight

Asserting that the increase in C-sections has increased optimum birth weight is misleading, as increases in the incidence of high birth weight (due to increased incidence of maternal obesity and gestational diabetes) is a significant factor in the increase in C-sections.

[edit] Negative selection vs. Stabilizing selection merger proposal

My interpretation of these different terms is this: while many instances of negative selection are also instances of stabilizing selection (aka. purifying selection), as there is selection against a change in the organism because the change is deleterious, it's also possible that a change in the environment can cause negative selection in a way that causes directional selection, rather than stabilizing selection.

I should not that I'm not an expert on population genetics and evolution, and neither of these articles have references, so I'm just going with my gut feeling on this with my general biology understanding. And some cursory google searching.

So, I'm going to remove the merger tag and edit the Negative selection page to no longer claim all instances are purifying selection. I'm sorry if it looks like I'm jumping the gun on this, but there aren't any references, these articles look poorly maintained, so I don't expect anyone would respond to a solicitation for opinions. If you do think I've made the wrong move and you can give a reference, please go ahead and revert my change and also add the reference to these articles. -- Madeleine 18:24, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Merged them regardless (I just had a popgen advanced course if that matters). The simple reason that each is basically a 1-sentence dictionary entry with bells & whistles should be reason enough. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 06:29, 16 February 2008 (UTC)