Heritable aggression in a pedigreed natural gray wolf population in Yellowstone National Park is associated with neurogenetic variation. Canis lupus strain:Yellowstone National Park | breed:gray wolf

Aggression is a complex trait that is often relevant to fitness. Efforts to identify genes associated with aggression are complicated by the fact that behavioral traits may not be strongly determined by genetics. We studied a pedigreed population of gray wolves in Yellowstone National Park to estimate the heritability of and the genetic variation associated with aggression. We found that moderate levels of heritability and identified genes significantly associated with aggression that broadly function in neuron development and behavioral syndromes. These results provide a framework for understanding the genomic architecture of a complex trait in a social carnivore. We present the incredible utility of a pedigreed natural population for dissecting a complex behavioral trait that is unparalleled.