Highly heritable and functionally relevant breed differences in dog behaviour
Variation across dog breeds presents a unique opportunity to investigate the evolution and biological basis of complex behavioural traits. We integrated behavioural data from more than 14 000 dogs from 101 breeds with breed-averaged genotypic data ( = 5697 dogs) from over 100 000 loci in the dog gen...
Saved in:
Published in | Proceedings of the Royal Society. B, Biological sciences Vol. 286; no. 1912; p. 20190716 |
---|---|
Main Authors | , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
England
The Royal Society
09.10.2019
|
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
Cover
Loading…
Summary: | Variation across dog breeds presents a unique opportunity to investigate the evolution and biological basis of complex behavioural traits. We integrated behavioural data from more than 14 000 dogs from 101 breeds with breed-averaged genotypic data (
= 5697 dogs) from over 100 000 loci in the dog genome. We found high levels of among-breed heritability for 14 behavioural traits (the proportion of trait variance attributable to genetic similarity among breeds). We next identified 131 single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with breed differences in behaviour, which were found in genes that are highly expressed in the brain and enriched for neurobiological functions and developmental processes, suggesting that they may be functionally associated with behavioural differences. Our results shed light on the heritability and genetic architecture of complex behavioural traits and identify dogs as a powerful model in which to address these questions. |
---|---|
Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 Electronic supplementary material is available online at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4668131. These authors contributed equally to this work. |
ISSN: | 0962-8452 1471-2954 |
DOI: | 10.1098/rspb.2019.0716 |