Implications of the apportionment of human genetic diversity for the apportionment of human phenotypic diversity

•We extend a simple model for studying genetic differences between groups.•We study selectively neutral traits controlled by k genetic loci.•Traits are about as informative about group membership as single genetic loci.•The expected size of the between-group trait difference does not increase with k.

Researchers in many fields have considered the meaning of two results about genetic variation for concepts of “race.” First, at most genetic loci, apportionments of human genetic diversity find that worldwide populations are genetically similar. Second, when multiple genetic loci are examined, it is possible to distinguish people with ancestry from different geographical regions. These two results raise an important question about human phenotypic diversity: To what extent do populations typically differ on phenotypes determined by multiple genetic loci? It might be expected that such phenotypes follow the pattern of similarity observed at individual loci. Alternatively, because they have a multilocus genetic architecture, they might follow the pattern of greater differentiation suggested by multilocus ancestry inference. To address the question, we extend a well-known classification model of Edwards (2003) by adding a selectively neutral quantitative trait. Using the extended model, we show, in line with previous work in quantitative genetics, that regardless of how many genetic loci influence the trait, one neutral trait is approximately as informative about ancestry as a single genetic locus. The results support the relevance of single-locus genetic-diversity partitioning for predictions about phenotypic diversity.