Estimating genetic parameters in natural populations using the ‘animal model’

2004 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences 1,184 citations

Abstract

Estimating the genetic basis of quantitative traits can be tricky for wild populations in natural environments, as environmental variation frequently obscures the underlying evolutionary patterns. I review the recent application of restricted maximum–likelihood ‘animal models’ to multigenerational data from natural populations, and show how the estimation of variance components and prediction of breeding values using these methods offer a powerful means of tackling the potentially confounding effects of environmental variation, as well as generating a wealth of new areas of investigation.

Keywords

Variation (astronomy)BiologyEstimationVariance (accounting)Genetic variationConfoundingNatural (archaeology)Quantitative geneticsEcologyStatisticsEvolutionary biologyEconometricsMathematicsGenetics

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Publication Info

Year
2004
Type
review
Volume
359
Issue
1446
Pages
873-890
Citations
1184
Access
Closed

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Loeske E. B. Kruuk (2004). Estimating genetic parameters in natural populations using the ‘animal model’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences , 359 (1446) , 873-890. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2003.1437

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DOI
10.1098/rstb.2003.1437