Heritability for egg size in the serpulid polychaeteHydroides elegans

Many quantitative models on the evolution of divergent life histories in marine invertebrates have focused on egg size with little empirical support for the assumption that significant heritability for egg size is present. Narrow-sense heritability (h²) is the proportion of total phenotypic variance...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Marine ecology. Progress series (Halstenbek) 2007-06, Vol.340, p.155-162
Main Authors: Miles, Cecelia M., Hadfield, Michael G., Wayne, Marta L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Eggs
Evolution
Evolutionary genetics
Female animals
Genetic variation
Heritability
Larvae
Larval development
Ova
Phenotypic traits
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Summary:Many quantitative models on the evolution of divergent life histories in marine invertebrates have focused on egg size with little empirical support for the assumption that significant heritability for egg size is present. Narrow-sense heritability (h²) is the proportion of total phenotypic variance in egg size that is made up of additive genetic variance, and is a predictor of short-term response to selection. We estimatedh² for the trait of egg size in the polychaete wormHydroides elegansusing artificial selection and by using a half-sibling breeding design. The cumulative realized heritability was calculated as 0.58 for egg size in a population ofH. elegansin Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Similarly, the half-sib breeding design gave an estimate forh² of 0.45 for the same population. This indicates that there is substantial potential for egg size to respond to varying selective pressures, at least in the direction of increase.
ISSN:0171-8630
1616-1599