Meeting Abstract

38.4  Wednesday, Jan. 5  Social Dominance Ability is Heritable in Male House Mice CUNNINGHAM, CB*; CHASE, K; RUFF, J; CARRIER, DR; Universtiy of Utah; Universtiy of Utah; University of Utah; University of Utah c.cunningham@utah.edu

Male house mice (Mus musculus) use agonistic physical competition to establish social dominance relationships. Functionally, these interactions determine access to resources; such as, food, territories, and mates. This behavior almost completely determines the reproductive fitness of an individual male. However, little is known about causal factors associated with this behavioral ability. Semi-natural enclosures were used to assess social dominance ability of male mice during competition for access to females over two generations. Heritability was estimated using both father-son regression and more powerful pedigree-based methods. Both methods gave similar results. We found that social dominance ability had a high heritability, h2 ≈ 0.62. Interestingly, this heritability remained when the effect of body mass was removed via regression [h2 ≈ 0.65] suggesting that body mass is not the only trait determining dominance ability. This finding is consistent with all other studies estimating the heritability of social dominance ability, from cockroaches to deer mice. In conclusion, additive genetic variation appears to be partially responsible for this phenotype.