Heritable environmental variance causes nonlinear relationships between traits: application to birth weight and stillbirth of pigs.

ABSTRACT: There is recent evidence from laboratory experiments and analysis of livestock populations that not only the phenotype itself, but also its environmental variance, is under genetic control. Little is known about the relationships between the environmental variance of one trait and mean levels of other traits, however. A genetic covariance between these is expected to lead to nonlinearity between them, for example between birth weight and survival of piglets, where animals of extreme weights have lower survival. The objectives were to derive this nonlinear relationship analytically using multiple regression and apply it to data on piglet birth weight and survival. This study provides a framework to study such nonlinear relationships caused by genetic covariance of environmental variance of

SUBMITTER: Mulder HA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4391567 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature