Question

Resplendent quetzal (Pharomachrus mocinno) is a beautiful bird species that lives in the tropical forests of Central America. Assuming that you started a breeding program and you would like to breed resplendent quetzal to produce longer tails. You measured 50 resplendent quetzals and obtained a mean tail length of 85.4 cm. You selected 10 resplendent quetzals with longest tails as breeders. The mean tail length of the breeders is 91.2 cm. After mating, offspring of the resplendent quetzal breeders have a mean tail length of 87.7 cm. What is the heritability of tail length in this resplendent quetzal population? Show your work and round numbers to 2 decimal places.

Answer 1

Mean tail length of Quetzals in the population = 85.4 cm
Mean tail length of Breeding Quetzals = 91.2 cm
Mean tail length of F1 Questzals = 87.7 cm

So,

Selection Differential = Mean tail length of Breeding Quetzals - Mean tail length of Quetzals in the population
    = 91.2 cm - 85.4 cm = 5.8 cm

Selection Response = Mean tail length of F1 Questzals - Mean tail length of Quetzals in the population
    = 87.7 cm - 85.4 cm = 2.3 cm

Thus, heritability = h² = 2.3/5.8 = 0.3965

Narrow sense heritability is 39.65%