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Heritability of interpack aggression in a wild pedigreed population of North American grey wolves

Bridgett M. vonHoldt

Corresponding Author

E-mail address: vonHoldt@princeton.edu

Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

Correspondence

Bridgett vonHoldt, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.

Email: vonHoldt@princeton.edu

Janet S. Sinsheimer, Department of Biostatistics, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.

Email: jsinshei@ucla.edu

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Alexandra L. DeCandia

Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

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Elizabeth Heppenheimer

Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

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Ilana Janowitz‐Koch

Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

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Ruoyao Shi

BioKnow Health Informatics Lab, College of Life Sciences, Jilin University, Changchun, China

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Hua Zhou

Department of Biostatistics, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

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Christopher A. German

Department of Biostatistics, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

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Kristin E. Brzeski

College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI, USA

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Kira A. Cassidy

Yellowstone Center for Resources, National Park Service, Yellowstone National Park, WY, USA

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Daniel R. Stahler

Yellowstone Center for Resources, National Park Service, Yellowstone National Park, WY, USA

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Janet S. Sinsheimer

Corresponding Author

E-mail address: jsinshei@ucla.edu

Department of Biostatistics, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Department of Human Genetics and Computational Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Correspondence

Bridgett vonHoldt, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.

Email: vonHoldt@princeton.edu

Janet S. Sinsheimer, Department of Biostatistics, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.

Email: jsinshei@ucla.edu

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First published: 06 January 2020
vonHoldt and DeCandia authors contributed equally.

Abstract

Aggression is a quantitative trait deeply entwined with individual fitness. Mapping the genomic architecture underlying such traits is complicated by complex inheritance patterns, social structure, pedigree information and gene pleiotropy. Here, we leveraged the pedigree of a reintroduced population of grey wolves (Canis lupus) in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, USA, to examine the heritability of and the genetic variation associated with aggression. Since their reintroduction, many ecological and behavioural aspects have been documented, providing unmatched records of aggressive behaviour across multiple generations of a wild population of wolves. Using a linear mixed model, a robust genetic relationship matrix, 12,288 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and 111 wolves, we estimated the SNP‐based heritability of aggression to be 37% and an additional 14% of the phenotypic variation explained by shared environmental exposures. We identified 598 SNP genotypes from 425 grey wolves to resolve a consensus pedigree that was included in a heritability analysis of 141 individuals with SNP genotype, metadata and aggression data. The pedigree‐based heritability estimate for aggression is 14%, and an additional 16% of the phenotypic variation was explained by shared environmental exposures. We find strong effects of breeding status and relative pack size on aggression. Through an integrative approach, these results provide a framework for understanding the genetic architecture of a complex trait that influences individual fitness, with linkages to reproduction, in a social carnivore. Along with a few other studies, we show here the incredible utility of a pedigreed natural population for dissecting a complex, fitness‐related behavioural trait.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

Mapped bam files for these 413 wolves are available on NCBI’s public Sequence Read Archive (PRJNA577957). Additional metadata for each individual wolf can be found in Table S1.

The full text of this article hosted at iucr.org is unavailable due to technical difficulties.