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Highly heritable and functionally relevant breed differences in dog behaviour
Open accessPublished version of a preprint
Abstract
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 ( n = 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.
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“Additionally, studies have shown that certain behaviours, such as trainability, aggression towards strangers, attention seeking, and attachment, may be more heritable than others [165].”
From Ethical Concerns about Fashionable Dog Breeding (2024) · cites this paper as [165]
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Metadata
- Authors
- MacLean, E. L., Snyder-Mackler, N., vonHoldt, B. M., & Serpell, J. A.
- Affiliations
- University of Arizona (US)
- Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
- Princeton University (US)
- University of Pennsylvania (US)
- Corresponding author
- MacLean, Evan L.
- Venue
- Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
- Publisher
- The Royal Society
- Published
- 2019-10-02
- Volume
- 286
- Issue
- 1912
- Pages
- 20190716
- ISSN
- 0080-4649 (ISSN-L)
- 0962-8452
- 1471-2954
- PMC
- PMC6790757
- OpenAlex
- W2978398499
- Cited by
- 144
- References
- 73
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 18 · 2024: 35 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 20 · 2021: 24 · 2020: 13 · 2019: 6
- FWCI
- 9.49
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences (publishedVersion)
- bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- UA Campus Repository (The University of Arizona) (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- University of Pennsylvania
- National Institute on Aging (R00AG051764)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Animal Science and Zoology › Human-Animal Interaction Studies
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Genetic and phenotypic traits in livestock
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Genetic Mapping and Diversity in Plants and Animals
- Keywords
- dog behavior, dog breeds, heritability, breed differences, single nucleotide polymorphisms, genetic architecture, brain gene expression, neurobiology, dog genome
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Behavior, Animal, Breeding, Dogs, Genotype, Species Specificity, Genome, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Heredity
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