Data from: Genetic characterization of dog personality traits

The genetic architecture of behavioural traits in dogs is of great
interest to owners, breeders and professionals involved in animal welfare,
as well as to scientists studying the genetics of animal (including human)
behaviour. The genetic component of dog behaviour is supported by
between-breed differences and some evidence of within-breed variation.
However, it is a challenge to gather sufficiently large datasets to
dissect the genetic basis of complex traits such as behaviour, which are
both time-consuming and logistically difficult to measure, and known to be
influenced by non-genetic factors. In this study, we exploited the
knowledge that owners have of their dogs to generate a large dataset of
personality traits in Labrador Retrievers. While accounting for key
environmental factors, we demonstrate that genetic variance can be
detected for dog personality traits assessed using questionnaire data. We
identified substantial genetic variance for several traits, including
fetching tendency and fear of loud noises, while other traits revealed
negligibly small heritabilities. Genetic correlations were also estimated
between traits, however, due to fairly large standard errors, only a
handful of trait pairs yielded statistically significant estimates.
Genomic analyses indicated that these traits are mainly polygenic, such
that individual genomic regions have small effects, and suggested
chromosomal associations for six of the traits. The polygenic nature of
these traits is consistent with previous behavioural genetics studies in
other species, for example in mouse, and confirms that large datasets are
required to quantify the genetic variance and to identify the individual
genes that influence behavioural traits.