You are hired as a consultant for a new venture: pet-squirrel breeding! Because customers prefer bushy tails on their pet squirrels, you are asked to help produce bushy-tailed squirrels from a local population as quickly and efficiently as possible. Of course, you know that bushy tails are a quantitative genetic trait in squirrels. What information would you need to obtain in order to accomplish this task?
A) the response to selection in the local squirrel population
B) the narrow-sense heritability in the local squirrel population
C) the selection differential in the local squirrel population
D) the dominance variance in the local squirrel population
E) the environmental variance in the local squirrel population

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

To efficiently breed bushy-tailed squirrels, you need to know the narrow-sense heritability, which indicates the proportion of phenotypic variance that is due to additive genetic variance. This helps predict the response to selection.

You Are Hired as a Consultant for a New Venture