"D. Wain Garrison" wrote in message ...
That would work , except crossing over redistributes genes of
each chromosome pair onto the other chromosome of that
pair and even moves some genes from the original pair to a
different pair of chromosomes.
So your analysis would give a good probability but would not
necessarily describe the actual distributaries of genes in the future
generations.


Hi Wain,

You are correct. I presented only the simplest case. If one had data
on the frequency of crossing over, you could compute the probabilities
more exactly. The probabilities I gave are for the genetic
relationship between a given individual and its grandparent. If we
wanted to look at gene frequencies in the population, we would have to
collect data on survival and reproductive rates as they depend on
genetic background, along with any other known selective pressure (as
in breeders selection process in a captive population), and of course
these will depend on factors geneticists typically ignore, such as
population size relative to habitat availability. The real world is
much more interesting than our simplistic models would suggest.

Cheers,

Ted