Temporal stability and microgeographic homogeneity of heritability estimates in a natural bird population

Abstract

Temporal end spatial variation in heritability estimates and additive genetic covariances of seven morphological traits were studied over a 9-year period in a natural population of the collared flycatcher, Ficedula albicollis. In spite of significant differences in trait means among young born in different years, we found no evidence for between-years variation in heritability estimates in any of the traits. Likewise, the elements of genetic covariance matrices were significantly correlated among the different study years, and the null hypothesis of no similarity was rejected. Furthermore, despite significant differences in mean tarsus length of birds born in different nestbox areas (habitats), we found no evidence for differences in heritability of tarsus length in different habitats. Our results indicate that the assumption on the constancy of quantitative genetic parameters over time and environments in evolutionary models may hold at least over short temporal or spatial distances.