Data from: The guantitative genetics of sexually selected traits, preferred traits and preference: a review and analysis of the data

The maintenance of variation in sexually selected traits is a puzzle that has received increasing attention in the past several decades. Traits that are related to fitness, such as life-history or sexually selected traits, are expected to have low additive genetic variance (and hence, heritability) due to the rapid fixation of advantageous alleles. However, previous analyses have suggested that the heritabilities of sexually selected traits are on average higher than nonsexually selected traits. We show that the heritabilities of sexually selected traits are not significantly different from those of nonsexually selected traits overall or when separated into the three trait categories: behavioural, morphological and physiological. In contrast with previous findings, the heritability of preference is quite low (h2 = 0.25 ± 0.06) and is in the same range as life-history traits. We distinguish preferred traits as a category of sexually selected traits and find that the heritability of the former is not significantly different than sexually selected traits overall (0.48 ± 0.04 vs. 0.46 ± 0.03). We test the hypothesis that the heritability of sexually selected traits is negatively correlated with the strength of sexual selection. As predicted, there is a significant negative correlation between the heritabilities of sexually selected traits and the strength of selection. This suggests that heritabilities do indeed decrease as sexual selection increases but sexual selection is not strong enough to cause heritabilities of sexually selected traits to deviate from the same type of nonsexually selected traits.维持性选择性状（sexually selected traits）的变异是近数十年来愈发受到学界关注的未解之谜。与适合度（fitness）相关的性状，例如生活史（life-history）性状或性选择性状，因有利等位基因（advantageous alleles）的快速固定，理论上应具备较低的加性遗传方差（additive genetic variance），进而表现出较低的遗传力（heritability）。但既往研究分析显示，性选择性状的平均遗传力高于非性选择性状。本研究表明，无论是整体层面分析，还是按行为学（behavioural）、形态学（morphological）、生理学（physiological）三类性状类别分别比较，性选择性状的遗传力与非性选择性状均无显著差异。与既往研究结果相悖的是，性选择偏好（sexual preference）的遗传力极低（h²=0.25±0.06），其数值区间与生活史性状一致。我们将偏好性状划分为性选择性状的一个独立类别后发现，其遗传力与整体性选择性状并无显著差异（0.48±0.04 vs. 0.46±0.03）。我们检验了“性选择性状的遗传力与性选择强度（strength of sexual selection）呈负相关”这一假说。结果与预测相符，性选择性状的遗传力与选择强度之间存在显著负相关。这表明遗传力确实会随性选择强度的提升而降低，但现有性选择强度尚未达到足以使性选择性状的遗传力偏离非性选择同类性状的程度。