epistasis

Wade MJ 2000 Epistasis as a genetic constraint within populations and an accelerant of adaptive divergence among them. Pages 213-231 in Wolf JB, Brodie ED III & Wade MJ, eds. Epistasis and the evolutionary process. Oxford UP. ISBN:9780195128060

• what (if anything) is lost from our understanding of the evolutionary process by our routine practice of assuming additivity?
• and, the corollary
• is more lost under some conditions than under others?

• opinions about the answers to these two questions could not be more diverse
• at one extreme, Lewontin (1974, p. 319), discussing the connection between micro- and macroevolution, concludes that "context and interaction are of the essence"
• at the other extreme, B. Charlesworth (1995, personal correspondence with N. Johnson), discussing the existence of synthetic lethals, concludes that "this relentless and futile search for intraspecific epistasis needs to be abandoned!"