Population differences in vision acuity: a review, with speculative notes on selection relaxation.

Abstract The contrast between the lower frequencies of vision defects reported among several different samples of hunting populations and the higher frequencies found repeatedly among populations with relatively long histories of agriculture and settled habitations points strongly to the relaxation of natural selection. Two rough estimates of the heritability of that conglomeration of genetic entities comprising “vision defects” are found in studies of MZ versus DZ twins and in studies of offspring of consanguineous parents versus those of unrelated parents. The hypothesis of relaxation of natural selection is plausible as man developed culture habitats more tolerant of persons with slight refractive aberrations. One can reasonably imagine that hereditary deficiencies accumulated sufficiently under such conditions to make possible quantitative estimates of differential population frequencies.

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