Heritability of Quasi-Continuous Skeletal Traits in a Randombred Population of House Mice

Heritabilities of 11 quasi-continuous skeletal traits were estimated in randombred house mice of three separate ages (1, 3, and 5 months). Three separate methods--regression, maximum likelihood correlation, and Falconer's Method--were used to obtain heritabilities for each of the separate age groups. Significant differences in the incidences of seven of the skeletal traits were found among ages, but they did not affect the heritability estimates, these estimates being pooled over ages. Heritabilities calcuated from female parents were consistently higher (by about 13%) than those from male parents, indicating the presence of maternal effects. Mid-parent estimates made by all three methods gave very similar mean levels (0.17--0.20). Although low, this level compared favorably with that expected on the basis of previously estimated rates of accumulation of genetic variance. Maternal effects estimated from full sib correlations averaged 0.08.