Polygenic Adaptation to an Environmental Shift: Temporal Dynamics of Variation Under Gaussian Stabilizing Selection and Additive Effects on a Single Trait

standing variation to fixation depends on the mutation rate affecting trait values. Given the fixation of a strongly selected variant, patterns of hitchhiking are similar on average for the two classes of sweeps because sweeps from standing variation involving large-effect mutations are rare when the optimum shifts. The distribution of effect sizes of new mutations has little effect on the time to reach the new optimum, but reducing the mutational variance increases the magnitude of hitchhiking patterns. In general, populations reach the new optimum prior to the completion of any sweeps, and the times to fixation are longer for this model than for standard models of directional selection. The long fixation times are due to a combination of declining selection pressures during adaptation and the possibility of interference among weakly selected sites for traits with high mutation rates.