In: Biology
You are wanting to breed a herd of super-cattle, which will be heavier than other cattle in Nebraska. You start with a population with a mean weight of 1450 lbs. You select the top 20% of your cattle for weight, which has a mean of 1550 lbs. You then breed only the selected cattle together and observe that the mean weight of the offspring is 1475 lbs.
a. What is the narrow-sense heritability for cattle weight for this population of cattle?
b. Your neighbor’s herd has a narrow-sense heritability of 40% (or 0.40) for cattle weight. Which herd, yours or the neighbor’s, would be best to use to breed the herd of super-cattle?