Pleiotropy in the Evolution of Structural Reduction and of Dominance

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Abstract
The hypothesis that the structural reduction of useless organs in evolution is due to mutation pressure has been credited to me by C. L. Brace. I rejected this in the 1929 paper to which he refers, and attributed such reduction to the replacement of genes that have maintained the organ by alleles, selected for their pleiotropic effects on other parts. The question arose in connection with criticism of the theory of the evolution of dominance, advanced at that time by R. A. Fisher. The hypothesis of almost universal pleiotropy, which I accepted, was the basis for both my primary objection to Fisher''s hypothesis and my interpretation of structural reduction in evolution. The confustion as to my meaning probably traces to a misunderstanding of what I meant by "mutation pressure", a term introduced in the 1929 paper to describe the potential effect of recurrent mutation on gene frequency, not the probable effect of mutations on characters.

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