Understanding phenotypic variation in terms of the underlying genetic variation is one of the central problems in biological evolution. During the last decade, valuable insights into the genetic architecture of phenotypic traits have been obtained and it is found that many phenotypic traits ranging from crop yield and human height to complex diseases are polygenic, that is, they are influenced by a large number of genetic variants. Despite this evidence, evolutionary biology continues to be dominated by two extreme views of adaptive dynamics where adaptation occurs either via large changes at a few genetic loci or infinitesimal changes at a very large number of them.

The aim of this program is to integrate these two seemingly disparate ideas into a single framework and extend their ambit to include other modes of adaptation, and address how one can describe other scenarios quantitatively and relate them to empirical data