Life history theory studies the evolution of traits related to reproductive fitness. Fertility and parental investment are key life history traits which, from an evolutionary standpoint, appear strongly interrelated. The aim of this work was to analyze the genetic and environmental structure and relationship of two behaviors associated with reproductive fitness: total number of offspring and me...

One of the main deficiencies affecting animal breeding programs in Peruvian alpacas is the low reproductive performance leading to low number of animals available to select from, decreasing strongly the selection intensity. Some reproductive traits could be improved by artificial selection, but very few information about genetic parameters exists for these traits in this specie. The aim of this...

OBJECTIVE This study estimated the genetic parameters for productive and reproductive traits. METHODS The data included production and reproduction records of animals that have calved between 1979 and 2013. The genetic parameters were estimated using multivariate mixed models (DMU) package, fitting univariate and multivariate mixed models with average information restricted maximum likelihood...

Due primarily to a lack of phenotypic data, little research has been undertaken on the genetics of reproductive performance in beef cattle. The objective of this study was to quantify, using data from the Irish national cattle herd, the contribution of additive genetics to phenotypic differences in reproductive performance in beef cattle and to investigate whether routinely available early pred...

Beef cattle production requires reproductive efficiency. However, measures of reproductive traits are not usually collected; consequently, correlated traits that could be used as indicators would be useful. We examined associations between measures of reproductive and productive efficiency that could be used as selection indicators. Data from 194 dams of the genetic groups Angus x Nelore, Carac...

Body size and development time are two critical phenotypic traits that can be highly adaptive in insects. Recent population genetic analyses and crossing experiments with the mountain pinebeetle (Dendroctonus ponderosaeHopkins) havedescribed substantial levels of neutralmolecular genetic differentiation, genetic differences in phenotypic traits, and reproductive isolation. To determine whether ...

The objective of this study was to describe the genetic and phenotypic relationship between milk urea nitrogen (MUN) and reproductive traits in Iranian Holstein dairy cows. Test-day MUN data obtained from 57 301 dairy cows on 20 large dairy herds in Iran between January 2005 and June 2009. Genetic parameters for MUN and reproductive traits were estimated with a five-trait model using ASREML pro...

In order to estimate genetic parameters for production traits and reproductive performance, 115 465 records of production traits and 90 942 records of reproductive performance from Iranian Holstein cows that were collected during 1980 to 2004 at Animal Breeding Center of Iran, were used. The estimations were performed using Restricted Maximum Likelihood method (REML) under an animal model by DF...