Heritability and genetic correlations of personality, life history, and morphology in the grey mouse lemur (M. murinus)

The recent interest in animal personality has sparked a number of studies on the heritability of personality traits. Yet, how the sources variance these traits can be decomposed remains unclear. Moreover, whether genetic correlations with life-history traits, personality traits and other phenotypic traits exist as predicted by the pace-of-life syndrome hypothesis remains poorly understood. Our aim was to compare the heritability of personality, life-history, and morphological traits and their potential genetic correlations in a small primate (Microcebus murinus). We performed an animal model analysis on six traits measured in a large sample of captive mouse lemurs (N=486). We chose two personality traits, two life history traits, and two morphological traits to 1) estimate the genetic and/or environmental contribution to their variance, and 2) test for genetic correlations between these traits. We found modest narrow-sense heritability for personality traits, morphological traits, and l...