EvolQG - An R package for evolutionary quantitative genetics

Abstract

We present an open source package for performing evolutionary quantitative genetics analyses in the R environment for statistical computing. Evolutionary theory shows that evolution depends critically on the available variation in a given population. When dealing with many quantitative traits this variation is expressed in the form of a covariance matrix, particularly the additive genetic covariance matrix or sometimes the phenotypic matrix, when the genetic matrix is unavailable. Given this mathematical representation of available variation, the EvolQG package provides functions for calculation of relevant evolutionary statistics, estimation of sampling error, corrections for this error, matrix comparison via correlations and distances, and functions for testing evolutionary hypotheses on taxa diversification.