repeatability and heritability of behavioural types in a social cichlid重复性和遗传行为类型在社会丽鱼科鱼.pdf

SAGE-Hindawi Access to Research International Journal of Evolutionary Biology Volume 2011, Article ID 321729, 15 pages doi:10.4061/2011/321729 Research Article Repeatability and Heritability of Behavioural Types in a Social Cichlid ´ ¨ ¨ Noemie Chervet, Markus Zottl, Roger Schurch, Michael Taborsky, and Dik Heg Department of Behavioural Ecology, Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Bern, 3032 Hinterkappelen, Switzerland Correspondence should be addressed to Dik Heg, dik.heg@iee.unibe.ch Received 11 December 2010; Accepted 28 February 2011 Academic Editor: Kristina M. Sefc ´ Copyright © 2011 Noemie Chervet et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Aim . The quantitative genetics underlying correlated behavioural traits (“animal personality”) have hitherto been studied mainly in domesticated animals. Here we report the repeatability (R) and heritability (h2 ) of behavioural types in the highly social cichlid fish Neolamprologus pulcher. Methods. We tested 1779 individuals repeatedly and calculated the h2 of behavioural types by variance components estimation (GLMM REML), using 1327 offspring from 162 broods from 74 pairs. Results. Repeatability of behavioural types was significant and considerable (0.546), but declined from 0.83 between tests conducted on the same day, to 0.19 on tests conducted up to 1201 days apart. All h2 estimates were significant but low (e.g., pair identity h2 = 0.15 ±0.03 SE). Additionally, we found significant variation between broods nested within t