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A QUANTITATIVE GENETIC ANALYSIS OF THERMAL SENSITIVITY IN THE LOCOMOTOR PERFORMANCE CURVE OF APHIDIUS ERVI
Author(s) -
Gilchrist George W.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
evolution
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.84
H-Index - 199
eISSN - 1558-5646
pISSN - 0014-3820
DOI - 10.1111/j.1558-5646.1996.tb03928.x
Subject(s) - heritability , biology , generalist and specialist species , genetic correlation , sensitivity (control systems) , correlation , evolutionary biology , zoology , quantitative genetics , statistics , genetics , ecology , genetic variation , gene , mathematics , geometry , electronic engineering , habitat , engineering
The thermal sensitivity of locomotor performance in Aphidius ervi , a parasitic hymenopteran, conforms to the “jack‐of‐all‐trades is master of none” model of specialist‐generalist trade‐offs. Performance breadth and maximal performance at the phenotypic level are negatively correlated in both sexes. A strong, negative genetic correlation was found for males, but not for females. In males, the broad‐sense heritability of performance breadth was about 0.16, and that of maximum walking velocity was about 0.29. Neither heritability was significantly different from zero in females. The broad‐sense heritability of body mass was about 0.3 in females and 0.6 in males, with a strong negative genetic correlation between size and maximum velocity in males only. These data provide the first quantitative genetic analysis of performance curves in eukaryotic animals, and one of the few demonstrations of the specialist‐generalist trade‐off that underlies much theory in evolutionary ecology.