Jaeda E.J. Patton

Abstract Some phenotypes are more likely to be produced by mutation than others, but the causal role of these propensities in the evolution of extant phenotypic diversity remains unclear. There are two major challenges: it is difficult to separate the effect of the genotype-phenotype (GP) map from that of natural selection in causing natural patterns of diversity, and most extant phenotypes evolved long ago in species whose GP maps cannot be recovered.

Abstract Biological systems may be biased in the phenotypes they can access by mutation, but the extent of these biases and their causal role in the evolution of extant phenotypic diversity remains unclear.