Genetics and Inheritance For Life Sciences Grade 12 Self Study Guide Free Download. Genetic inheritance is necessary for evolutionary change. It describes how genes are passed from one generation to the next. It might consequently initially seem surprising, then, that genetic inheritance itself is rarely included in life history research. Instead, assumptions are made about what is inherited, and what different patterns of inheritance mean.
The reason life history theorists finesse inheritance is that our understanding of the genetic architecture of life histories is usually so rudimentary we have very little idea about the role that genotypes at specific loci play (Falconer, 1960).
In this section, the author briefly considers the theoretical underpinnings that have led to life history theorists treating inheritance in the way they do. The theory has arisen from the way that inheritance is treated in population models.