Species' life history traits, including maturation age, number of reproductive bouts, offspring size and number, reflect adaptations to diverse biotic and abiotic selection pressures. A striking example of divergent life histories is the evolution of either iteroparity (breeding multiple times) or semelparity (breed once and die). We analysed published data on salmonid fishes and found that sem...

heritability, environmentaland genetic correlations between body weight at hatch (bw0), eight (bw8) and twelve (bw12) weeksof age, body weight at sexual maturity (bwm), age at sexual maturity (afe),the weight of the first egg laid by the hen (ewm), the mean egg weight from 28 to 32 wks (ew28-32) and egg numbers (ens) were estimated by the restricted maximum likelihood method under an animal mod...

this study was conducted to investigate direct and maternal effects on some economic traits in north iranian native fowls. traits considered were body weight at 1 day of age (bw1), body weight at 8 weeks of age (bw8), body weight at 12 weeks of age (bw12), egg number (en) during the first 12 weeks of laying period, egg weight at 1st day of laying (ew1), mean egg weight at 28th, 30th and 32nd we...

The dung beetle, Onthophagus taurus, was introduced <50 years ago from its native Mediterranean range into Western Australia (WA) and the Eastern United States (EUS). The intensity of intra- and interspecific competition for dung as a breeding resource is substantially higher in WA. First, we tested whether differential resource competition in the two exotic ranges is associated with divergence...

A primary goal of polygenic scores, which aggregate the effects of thousands of trait-associated DNA variants discovered in genome-wide association studies (GWASs), is to estimate individual-specific genetic propensities and predict outcomes. This is typically achieved using a single polygenic score, but here we use a multi-polygenic score (MPS) approach to increase predictive power by exploiti...

Anurans (frogs and toads) are unique among land vertebrates in possessing a free-living larval stage that, parallel to adult frogs, diversified into an impressive range of ecomorphs. The tempo and mode at which tadpole morphology evolved through anuran history as well as its relationship to lineage diversification remain elusive. We used a molecular phylogenetic framework to examine patterns of...

a camel research station was established in 1990 at the central desert land of iran named kavir-e-loot, to evaluate productivity performance of one humped camel. the data consisted of birth weights (bw), three (w3), six (w6), nine (w9) months and yearling (w12) body weight of animals and the pedigree was registered during a period of 14 years since 1991 to 2004. the body weight traits of birth,...

The current study was conducted to investigate the effects of genetic and non-genetic factors on body weight and carcass traits of Japanese quails. Two strains of Japanese quail (150 wild quails and 150 white quails) were used as base population. Four mating groups were used to produce progenies: wild male × wild female, white male × wild female, wild male × white female and white male × white ...

eleven goat breeds of different origin (10 spanish and 1 african) were considered for this study: zambian dwarf, azpi-gorri, blanca-andaluza, blanca-celtibérica, blanca de rasquera, catalana, malagueña, moncaína, murciano-granadina, negra serrana and pyrenean. nine linear body measurements for females, as well as the body weight ratio between gender and body weight, were obtained from literatur...