The Correlation Between the Individual Heterozygosity
نویسندگان
چکیده
A specific formulation is presented for the correlation between the heterozygosity of a randomly mating parent and its offspring for a diallelic locus, and for the correlation when multiple loci are onsidered. The expected correlation is maximal, approaching r=0.50, when allelic frequencies are highly asymmetric, and it is zero when the allelic frequencies are equal to 0.50. Multilocus allozyme data from limber pine, Pinus flexilis, and from horses of standardbred, American saddlebred, and thoroughbred breeds are used to demonstrate correlations between a parent and its offspring. The Spearman rank correlation between the heterozygosity of a limber pine and the mean heterozygosity of her offspring is r = 0.45. Correlations in the horses range from r = 0.16 to 0.32. Introduction Two generalizations help to describe the pattern of transmission of polymorphic loci segregating 2 alleles. Regardless of the allelic frequencies, half of the heterozygous offspring in a population have homozygous mothers, and half of them have heterozygous mothers. Regardless of the genotype(s) of the father or fathers, heterozygous mothers always produce 50% heterozygous offspring. However, these robust generalizations do not support the commonly held misconception that heterozygosity is not heritable in any way. Here we make the point that individual heterozygosity is expected to be correlated between parents and their offspring, and we report correlations of individual heterozygosity of allozyme loci between parents and their offspring in limber pine, Pinus flexilis, and from pedigreed horses of standardbred, American saddlebred, and thoroughbred breeds. Theoretical Expectations A correlation between individual heterozygosities of parents and their offspring arises from the fact that, at most allelic frequencies, heterozygous parents produce higher proportions of heterozygous progeny than do homozygous parents. Consider a locus segregating 2 alleles, A and a, with frequencies p and q, respectively, in an infinite population with no selection. To simplify the explanation, we will consider the production of progeny genotypes from the perspective of the maternal parent. Homozygous mothers produce 50% heterozygous offspring when allelic frequencies are p = q = 0.5, but at all other frequencies they produce lower proportions of heterozygous offspring. More precisely, the proportion of heterozygous progeny from heterozygous mothers is
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