Selection for Nursing Ability and Adult Weight in Mice

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RESUMO

Three selection treatments were conducted for 12 generations in each of two base populations (P and Q): (1) increased nursing ability of the mother (n12), as measured by mean 12-day weight of eight young within a crossfostering set (MP and MQ lines), (2) increased adult (42-day) body weight of the offspring (w42) (WP and W Q lines), and (3) performance combining the two traits (n12 and w42) into a selection index (BP and BQ lines). Lines C P and CQ were maintained as unselected controls in each population. In each line-generation subclass, 92 single-pair matings were made and the offspring assigned to balanced crossfostering sets of four dams each. Regression coefficients of mean performance (in grams) on generations were 0.080 ±0.029 and 0.054 ± 0.031 for n12 in MP and MQ, and 0.680 ± 0.039 and 0.868 ± 0.051 for w42 in WP and WQ, respectively. The BP and BQ lines showed genetic gains in n12 (0.090 and 0.053, respectively) and w42 (0.576 and 0.696) intermediate between the performance of MP and WP, and MQ and WQ, respectively, except for n12 of BQ. Realized heritabilities for n12 were 0.16 ± 0.05 and 0.11 ± 0.06 and those for w42 were 0.40 ± 0.02 and 0.43 ± 0.03 for P and Q, respectively. The realized genetic correlations between n12 and w42 were 0.70 ± 0.07 and 0.73 ± 0.08 in P and Q, respectively. The ratios of the predicted to observed responses in MP, BP and BQ were 0.99, 1.03 and 0.89, respectively. However, the predicted and observed responses differed in M Q, WP and WQ; the ratios were 1.29, 0.65 and 0.65, respectively. The observed combined responses for n12 and w42 in the index lines (BP and BQ) were smaller than the optimum expected from index selection. A possible cause was that the estimated genetic correlations (0.22 ± 0.16 and -0.17 ± 0.16 for BP and B Q, respectively) and heritabilities (0.39 ± 0.03 and 0.28 ± 0.02, respectively) for w42 that were used to construct the selection index were smaller than the respective realized parameters.

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