BSC 385 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Parental Investment, Total Variation, Heritability

• School: University of Alabama
• Department: Biological Sciences
• Course: BSC 385
• Professor: Jonathan Benstead

Document Summary

Behaviors that are genetically controlled are subject to natural selection (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1) Like other traits, each behavior has both a fitness cost and benefit. Selection favors behaviors for which the benefits outweigh the costs. Behaviors are result of genetic make-up as well as environment and experience of an individual. Few behaviors are purely genetically fixed or purely the result of the environment. Behavioral plasticity is itself an adaptation (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1) Broad-sense heritability (h2)- the proportion of the total variation that is due to genetic differences among individuals (cid:1) (cid:1) Narrow-sense heritability (h2)- the proportion of the total phenotypic variance that is due to additive genetic variance. Estimates of heritability h2 can be measured as the slope of the regression of the average offspring phenotype vs. the average of the parental phenotypes. Estimates of h2 can be obtained by comparison of monozygotic and dizygotic twins raised in different environments. What are the fundamental mechanisms of behavior interaction.