Invasive alien species can have serious adverse impacts on both the environment and the economy. Being able to predict the impacts of an alien species could assist in preventing or reducing these impacts. This study aimed to establish whether there are any life history traits consistently correlated with the impacts of alien birds across two continents, Europe and Australia, as a first step tow...

Body weight and abdominal fat traits in meat-type chickens are complex and economically important factors. Our objective was to identify quantitative trait loci (QTL) responsible for body weight and abdominal fat traits in broiler chickens. The Northeast Agricultural University Resource Population (NEAURP) is a cross between broiler sires and Baier layer dams. We measured body weight and ...

Correlated responses to selection for postweaning gain in mice were studied to determine the influence of population size and selection intensity. Correlated traits measured were three-, six- and eight-week body weights, litter size, twelve-day litter weight, proportion infertile matings and two indexes of reproductive performance. In general, the results agreed with observations made on direct...

The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the contribution of genetic factors on body configuration related phenotypes. The sample consisted of 119 Belgian nuclear families including 231 males and 229 females. Factor analysis with varimax rotation was carried out to analyse 13 length and circumference measures and the resulting two synthetic traits (LF and CF; linear and circumference fa...

What mechanisms underlie aging? One theory, the wear-and-tear model, attributes aging to progressive deterioration in the molecular and cellular machinery which eventually lead to death through the disruption of physiological homeostasis. The second suggests that life span is genetically programmed, and aging may be derived from intrinsic processes which enforce a non-random, terminal time inte...

Explaining large-scale patterns of variation in body size has been considered a central question in ecology and evolutionary biology because several life-history traits are directly linked to body size. For ectothermic organisms, little is known about what processes influence geographic variation in body size. Changes in body size and sexual size dimorphism (SSD) have been associated with envir...

Sexual conflict at loci influencing traits shared between the sexes occurs when sex-specific selection pressures are antagonistic relative to the genetic correlation between the sexes. To assess whether there is sexual conflict over shared traits, we estimated heritability and intersexual genetic correlations for highly sexually dimorphic traits (horn volume and body mass) in a wild population ...

Body measurement and meat quality traits play important roles in the evaluation of productivity and economy in cattle, which are influenced by genes and environmental factors. PRKAG2, which encodes the γ2 regulatory subunit of AMPK, is associated with key metabolic pathways in muscle. We detected bovine PRKAG2 gene polymorphisms and analyzed their associations with body measurement and meat qua...

Fat accumulation has been classically considered as a means of energy storage. Obese people are theorized as metabolically 'thrifty', saving energy during times of food abundance. However, recent research has highlighted many neuro-behavioral and social aspects of obesity, with a suggestion that obesity, abdominal obesity in particular, may have evolved as a social signal. We tested here whethe...