Recent studies have demonstrated significant correlations between stem and leaf hydraulic properties when comparing across species within ecological communities. This implies that these traits are co-evolving, but there have been few studies addressing plant water relations within an explicitly evolutionary framework. This study tests for correlated evolution among a suite of plant water-use tr...

While previous studies have correlated the Dark Triad traits (i.e., narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism) with a preference for short-term relationships, little research has addressed possible correlations with short-term relationship sub-types. In this online study using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk system (N = 210) we investigated the manner in which scores on the Dark Triad relate to th...

We examined heritabilities and correlations among measures of locomotor performance (speed, stamina) and among possible morphometric determinants of performance (hindlimb span, tail length) in families of hatchling lizards (Sceloporus occidentalis). We were particularly interested in determining whether these traits were heritable and thus might potentially respond genetically to selection. Mor...

Analytic results obtained using simple models show that estimates of selection response of univariate experiments using animal models are completely dependent on the heritability used as prior when fixed effects are nested within generations, and both on the prior and on the true heritability parameter when fixed effects overlap across generations. Univariate animal model estimators of correlat...

OBJECTIVE The existing methods for identifying multiple rare variants underlying complex diseases in family samples are underpowered. Therefore, we aim to develop a new set-based method for an association study of dichotomous traits in family samples. METHODS We introduce a framework for testing the association of genetic variants with diseases in family samples based on a generalized linear ...

Genetic improvement of pig performance is a primary tool in enhancing profitability in pig enterprises. The first step of genetically improving livestock is the development of a breeding objective which combines all economically important traits that can be improved by selection. These traits are given economic values that are defined as the increase in profit with a single unit change in each ...

The People of India database of the Anthropological Survey of India documents 631 cultural, ecological, and economic traits of the 4635 communities to which the entire Indian population is assigned. Focusing on 1342 communities of South India, we looked for correlates of low (1 or 2 children) and high (4 or more children) desired family size (DFS) reported as the norm for any given community by...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Current understanding of stomatal development in Arabidopsis thaliana is based on mutations producing aberrant, often lethal phenotypes. The aim was to discover if naturally occurring viable phenotypes would be useful for studying stomatal development in a species that enables further molecular analysis. METHODS Natural variation in stomatal abundance of A. thaliana was ex...

The social behavior of animals, which is partially controlled by genetics, is one of the factors involved in their adaptation to large breeding groups. To understand better the relationships between different social behaviors, fear behaviors and production traits, we analyzed the phenotypic and genetic correlations of these traits in Japanese quail by a second generation crossing of two lines d...