QST

Whitlock MC & Guillaume F 2009 Testing for spatially divergent selection: comparing QST to FST. Genetics 183:1055-1063.

  • the simulations conducted here all assumed that traits are determined by alleles that interact additively, both between and within loci
  • dominance variance can under some circumstances cause mean QST to be greater than mean FST, even for neutral traits
  • the distribution of QST among neutral traits has not been investigated for traits affected by dominance or epistasis
  • our ability to use the distribution predicted from the FST of marker loci depends on the distribution being similar for QST
  • this has not been investigated for traits with dominance
  • this method, and indeed any comparison of QST and FST, requires stringent assumptions about the additive basis of the quantitative trait
  • the Lewontin–Krakauer distribution is based on a χ2 distribution
  • its right tail extends to positive infinity and is not constrained to be less than one