Abstract
The southwestern Australian frog Crinia georgiana (Anura; Myobatrachidae) inhabits ephemeral pools in which the tadpoles often face desiccation. Under these conditions selection on tadpoles can be severe and can directly affect fitness during the aquatic as well as the terrestrial developmental stages. A quantitative genetic study using a half-sib breeding design was conducted to understand the genetic effects on larval life-history traits. We found no significant additive genetic variance in any of larval traits. Except for hatching period, heritability estimates based on females were high in egg size, larval period, snout-vent length, and weight at metamorphosis, suggesting non-additive genetic effects. These results indicate that any response to selection during hatching and larval periods should be predominately governed by non-additive genetic effects in C. georgiana.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 425-430 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| Journal | Animal Cells and Systems |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Oct 2012 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was carried out under the ethical guidelines of the University of Western Australia (approval number: 98/008/E36) and with the permission of the Department of Conservation and Land Management (permit no: SF002650). M. Smith received a University of Western Australia Post Graduate Award and funds from the Department of Zoology, University of Western Australia. We thank J. D. Roberts for his valuable feedback on a previous draft of this manuscript. This work was supported financially by a research grant of the National Academy of Agricultural Science (PJ007410) and by the Ewha Global Top 5 Grant 2011of Ewha Womans University.
Keywords
- additive genetic variation
- larval period
- maternal effect
- multiple mating