Issues in the genetics of social behavior

Fuller, John L.; Hahn, Martin E.

doi:10.1007/bf01065697

Cited by 50 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Despite the recommendations made over 30 years ago by Fuller & Hahn (1976) and Scott (1977), studies of the genetics of variation in aggressive behaviours have generally considered aggression as a characteristic of an individual, independent of the social context in which it is expressed (Hahn & Schanz 1996). However, with aggression defined as an individual's agonistic reaction towards a conspecific, assigning any given phenotypic observation to an individual is inherently problematic.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is because the behaviour expressed by an individual will usually depend on the behaviour of the conspecific with which it interacts. Although Fuller & Hahn (1976) proposed several experimental methods to cope with this difficulty, all of them show some limitations. For example, the methods proposed can hardly be applied to studies of wild animals, and are also unlikely to capture the full complexity of a social interaction.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Indirect genetic effects and the evolution of aggression in a vertebrate system

et al. 2008

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Aggressive behaviours are necessarily expressed in a social context, such that individuals may be influenced by the phenotypes, and potentially the genotypes, of their social partners. Consequently, it has been hypothesized that indirect genetic effects (IGEs) arising from the social environment will provide a major source of heritable variation on which selection can act. However, there has been little empirical scrutiny of this to date. Here we test this hypothesis in an experimental population of deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus). Using quantitative genetic models of five aggression traits, we find repeatable and heritable differences in agonistic behaviours of focal individuals when presented with an opponent mouse. For three of the traits, there is also support for the presence of IGEs, and estimated correlations between direct and indirect genetic (rA O,F ) effects were high. As a consequence, any selection for aggression in the focal individuals should cause evolution of the social environment as a correlated response. In two traits, strong positive rA O,F will cause the rapid evolution of aggression, while in a third case changes in the phenotypic mean will be constrained by negative covariance between direct and IGEs. Our results illustrate how classical analyses may miss important components of heritable variation, and show that a full understanding of evolutionary dynamics requires explicit consideration of the genetic component of the social environment.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Indirect genetic effects and the evolution of aggression in a vertebrate system

et al. 2008

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“…However, the field still lacks a systematic comparison of amounts of variance explained across different categories of traits. Such studies could use panels of inbred lines (e.g., Fuller and Hahn 1976;Bailey and Hoskins 2014;Baud et al 2017), or pedigreed populations (e.g., Wilson et al 2009;Germain et al 2016). Experimental evolution approaches would also allow an assessment of how IGEs versus DGEs contribute to selection responses, which could be used to test the evolutionary potential of different types of traits.…”

Section: Boxmentioning

confidence: 99%

Indirect genetic effects in behavioral ecology: does behavior play a special role in evolution?

2017

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Behavior is rapidly flexible and highly context-dependent, which poses obvious challenges to researchers attempting to dissect its causes. However, over a century of unresolved debate has also focused on whether the very flexibility and context-dependence of behavior lends it a unique role in the evolutionary origins and patterns of diversity in the Animal Kingdom. Here, we propose that both challenges can benefit from studying how indirect genetic effects (IGEs: the effects of genes expressed in one individual on traits in another individual) shape behavioral phenotypes. We provide a sketch of the theoretical framework that grounds IGEs in behavioral ecology research and focus on recent advances made from studies of IGEs in areas of behavioral ecology such as sexual selection, sexual conflict, social dominance, and parent-offspring interactions. There is mounting evidence that IGEs have important influences on behavioral phenotypes associated with these processes, such as sexual signals and preferences and behaviors which function to manipulate interacting partners. IGEs can also influence both responses to selection and selection itself, and considering IGEs refines evolutionary predictions and provides new perspectives on the origins of seemingly perplexing behavioral traits. A key unresolved question, but one that has dominated the behavioral sciences for over a century, is whether behavior is more likely than other types of traits to contribute to evolutionary change and diversification. We advocate taking advantage of an IGE approach to outline falsifiable hypotheses and a general methodology to rigorously test this frequently proposed, yet still contentious, special role of behavior in evolution.

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“…The most difficult part of the study of genetic differences in mating behaviour arises from mating behaviour being the result of the interactions of two individuals (Fuller & Hahn, 1976). Both sexes must be evaluated separately and together during the statistical analysis.…”

Section: Behavioural Observations and Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Morphology may vary between individuals, but accurate phenotypic values are expected, because repeatabilities are influenced only by measurement error. Studies of hybrid mating behaviour are influenced by two additional levels of variability, which are the inherent variation in an individual's behaviour and the variation caused by behaviour of its partner (Fuller & Hahn, 1976;Boake, 1989b). In an ideal experiment, every individual would be measured repeatedly, with a variety of partners, and its mean phenotype used in analyses.…”

Section: Inheritance Of Differences Between the Speciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inheritance of behavioural differences between two interfertile, sympatric species, Drosophila silvestris and D. heteroneura

1998

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The Hawaiian fly species, Drosophila silvestris and D. heteroneura, are sympatric and interfertile but show strong behavioural isolation and major differences in male aggressive behaviour and the associated morphology. As a first step in elucidating the genetic control of the differences between these species, we examined the mating and aggressive behaviour of their reciprocal F 1 hybrids. The latency to the first wing vibration and the latency to copulate did not differ significantly between the parental species. However, D. heteroneura females had a very low tendency to copulate with D. silvestris males, rarely mating during the observation period. The duration of copulation also differed significantly: same-species pairs of D. silvestris had copulations that lasted about 50% longer than those of same-species pairs of D. heteroneura. The hybrids were intermediate between the parental species for both the tendency to copulate with D. silvestris males and the duration of copulation, suggesting codominance or polygenic inheritance for those traits. The aggression traits that we scored were the leg posture and wing extension during early aggression, and the leg posture and head position during escalated aggression. The parental species showed clear differences for each of these traits. The F 1 hybrids resembled one parent or the other, without showing intermediate values, suggesting single-gene dominance or threshold expression of many genes for those traits. None of the courtship or aggressive traits showed X-chromosomal effects, although the head shape of hybrids is influenced by genes on the X chromosome. It is difficult to reconcile the patterns of inheritance of aggressive behaviour and the lack of an X-chromosomal effect with the hypothesis that these traits are influenced by a coadapted gene complex.

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Issues in the genetics of social behavior

Cited by 50 publications

References 20 publications

Indirect genetic effects and the evolution of aggression in a vertebrate system

Indirect genetic effects and the evolution of aggression in a vertebrate system

Indirect genetic effects in behavioral ecology: does behavior play a special role in evolution?

Inheritance of behavioural differences between two interfertile, sympatric species, Drosophila silvestris and D. heteroneura

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