BioConcepts

Hardy-Weinberg lawHardy-Weinberg-Gesetz (ger.)

• A fundamental principle of population genetics that is approximately true for small populations and holds with increasing exactness for larger and larger populations: population gene frequencies and population genotype frequencies remain constant from generation to generation if mating is random and if mutation, selection, immigration, and emigration do not occur— called also Hardy-Weinberg principle. (Merriam Webster 2011)
  category population

  1943

  The Hardy-Weinberg Law One of the basic relations in the genetics of populations is expressed by the statement that in a very large random-mating population in which two alleles A and A' occur in the frequencies pand q (= 1- p) the three types AA, AA' and A'A' are expected to remain in equilibrium from generation to generation at frequencies of p2, 2pq and q2, in the absence of mutation or selection.

  Stern, C. (1943). The Hardy-Weinberg law. Science 97, 137-138: 137.

  1982

  Hardy-Weinberg law That allele frequencies will tend to remain constant from generation to generation and that genotypes will reach an equilibrium frequency in one generation of random mating and will remain at that frequency thereafter; demonstrating that meiosis and recombination do not alter gene frequencies.

  Lincoln, R.J., Boxshall, G.A. & Clark, P.F. (1982). A Dictionary of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics: 109.