Data on litter production traits of does, involving 1120 litters, was collected over a 10-year period (1984 to 1994) and analyzed to estimate heritability and repeatability. Locally adapted does and bucks of predominantly New Zealand White breeding were involved. Traits studied were total litter size born and born alive, and litter size and weight at 21 days, 28 days (weaning) and 84 days (mark...

Maternal lineage effects on milk yield traits, considered indicative of cytoplasmic inheritance, were evaluated with animal models. Cattle were from a selection experiment begun in 1968. Maternal pedigrees were traced to the first female member in the Holstein-Friesian Herdbook; purchased cows entering the herd, considered foundation females, were assigned to maternal lineage groups. All models...

diallel crosses of eight genotypes of safflower were conducted and f1 and f2 generations were evaluated to estimate genetic parameters for seed-quality related traits including protein contents (%), fiber, ash and oil yeild. griffing’s methods 1 and 2 for f1 and f2 generations was used, respectively. sixty four genotypes including 8 parents and 56 f1 progenies, and half diallel crosses of f2 ge...

Body size clines in Drosophila melanogaster have been documented in both Australia and South America, and may exist in Southern Africa. We crossed flies from the northern and southern ends of each of these clines to produce F(1), F(2), and first backcross generations. Our analysis of generation means for wing area and wing length produced estimates of the additive, dominance, epistatic, and mat...

Genetic parameters for a random regression model of growth in Gelbvieh beef cattle were constructed using existing estimates. Information for variances along ages was provided by parameters used for routine Gelbvieh multiple-trait evaluation, and information on correlations among different ages was provided by random regression model estimates from literature studies involving Nellore cattle. B...

Human growth is a complex and poorly understood process. We studied the effect of genetic and environmental factors on height and body mass index (BMI, kg/m(2)) based on maternal reports at 3, 4, 5, 7, 10 and 12 years of age in a large longitudinal cohort of Dutch twins (7755 complete twin pairs at age 3). Several multivariate variance component models for twins were fitted to the data using th...

Division of labor is central to the organization of insect societies. Within-colony comparisons between subfamilies of workers (patrilines or matrilines) revealed genetic effects on division of labor in many social insect species. Although this has been taken as evidence for additive genetic effects on division of labor, it has never been experimentally tested. To determine the relative roles o...

The expression of most developmental or behavioral traits involves complex interactions between quantitative trait loci (QTL) from the maternal and offspring genomes. The maternal-offspring interactions play a pivotal role in shaping the direction and rate of evolution in terms of their substantial contribution to quantitative genetic (co)variation. To study the genetics and evolution of matern...