The effects of mating systems and selection on pupa weight inTribolium

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Abstract
An experimental evaluation of the effect of mating systems and selection upon an additive trait thought to be highly heritable was made. There were two similar replications. Each consisted of a mass selected and randomly selected group, with five mating systems within each group.Realized heritabilities in the mass selected lines were considerably less than was expected prior to the initiation of the experiment, and averaged approximately fourteen percentage points less than heritability estimated from the zero generation. This in turn resulted in smaller correlations between the genotypes of mates than had been previously expected in the assortatively and disassortatively mated lines.The average response of the mass selected, assortatively mated lines was slightly more than the mass selected, randomly mated lines, though not statistically significant. This result seems to conform to theoretical expectations.In the mass selected lines, estimates of phenotypic and genetic variance declined regardless of mating systems. There was a tendency for phenotypic variances to decrease in the randomly selected lines, but this was not the case for estimates of genetic variance.As an aid to selection, it seems that assortative mating would be of little value with traits of low or intermediate heritability but might be useful if the trait is highly heritable.

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