AN ANALYSIS OF TOOTH CROWN MORPHOLOGY IN AMERICAN WHITE TWINS

The limited studies conducted to date on tooth crown morphology in twins have generally focussed on concordance rates and zygosity determination. Such efforts have not provided estimates of heritability for crown traits nor have they taken into account the possibility of greater environmental covari...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Anthropologie (Brno) 1984-01, Vol.22 (3), p.223-231
Main Authors: SCOTT, G. RICHARD, POTTER, ROSARIO H. YAP
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Dentition
Genetic variance
Genetic variation
Heritability
Human genetics
ORIGINALARBEITEN ORIGINAL PAPERS TRAVAUX ORIGINAUX ОРИГИНАЛЬНЫЕ СТАТЬИ
Phenotypic traits
Shovels
Statistical variance
Teeth
Twins
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Summary:The limited studies conducted to date on tooth crown morphology in twins have generally focussed on concordance rates and zygosity determination. Such efforts have not provided estimates of heritability for crown traits nor have they taken into account the possibility of greater environmental covariance in monozygotic twins. For the present study, we observed ten crown traits on 14 teeth in a series of American white monozygotic and dizygotic twins and analyzed these data through analysis of variance techniques. Specific assumptions regarding the variance among and within twin pairs were tested to sort out those traits which may show greater environmental covariance in MZ twins. The trait's distributions were also examined in a control series. Only seven of the 14 variables met all assumptions of the model and, for these traits, genetic variance estimates were highly significant. Heritability estimates for this set of traits were of similar magnitude, indicating that between one-third and one half of the phenotypic variance in expression can be attributed to genetic causes. While these traits do show a significant component of genetic variation, surficial crown morphology has an element of plasticity which may account, in part, for certain long-term hominid dental trends.
ISSN:0323-1119