Rate of adaptation, evolvability and orientation of genetic variance relative to selection gradients (β) for ten bird populations.

The relative rate of adaptation RA is calculated according to eq (2) and compares the rate of adaptation in the presence and the absence of genetic correlations. If the rate of adaptation is lower than 1, genetic correlations slow down adaptation. For each population the proportion of support of the posterior distribution (PS) for the hypothesis of RA<1 is also given. In bold are shown significant estimates where the posterior distribution supports the hypothesis by at least 95%. Multivariate evolvability (×100), the amount of predicted response occurring exactly in the direction of selection was calculated according to eq (4). Average evolvability (×100), the average evolvability in random direction of phenotypic space was calculated according to eq (5). The angles between selection gradients and gmax (θgmax) were calculated according to eq (6).