Heritability and genetic correlations of personality traits in a wild population of yellow-bellied marmots (Marmota flaviventris)

Describing and quantifying animal personality is now an integral part of behavioural studies because individually distinctive behaviours have ecological and evolutionary consequences. Yet, to fully understand how personality traits may respond to selection, one must understand the underlying heritability and genetic correlations between traits. Previous studies have reported a moderate degree of heritability of personality traits but few of these studies have either been conducted in the wild or estimated the genetic correlations between personality traits. Estimating the additive genetic variance and covariance in the wild is crucial to understand the evolutionary potential of behavioural traits. Enhanced environmental variation could reduce heritability and genetic correlations thus leading to different evolutionary predictions. We estimated the additive genetic variance and covariance of docility in the trap, sociability (mirror image stimulation), and exploration and activity in two...对动物个性（animal personality）进行描述与量化，现已成为行为学研究不可或缺的组成部分，原因在于个体特有的行为模式具备生态与进化效应。然而，若要全面理解个性性状如何响应选择作用，就必须明晰性状背后的遗传力（heritability）以及性状间的遗传相关（genetic correlation）。既往研究已报道了个性性状具有中等程度的遗传力，但此类研究中极少有在野外环境开展，亦未对个性性状间的遗传相关进行估算。在野外环境中估算加性遗传方差与协方差（additive genetic variance and covariance），对于理解行为性状的进化潜力至关重要。环境变异程度的加剧可能会降低遗传力与遗传相关，进而催生不同的进化预测结果。本研究对两类研究对象的诱捕笼温顺性（docility in the trap）、社交性（镜像刺激法，mirror image stimulation）以及探索行为与活动能力的加性遗传方差与协方差进行了估算……