Heritability puzzlers
2 days ago
- Heritability is defined as the ratio of genotypic variance to phenotypic variance, not a simple point-based attribution.
- The concept of genotypic value (average trait in random environments) is crucial but often glossed over.
- Heritability can be misaligned with intuitive causal interpretations; e.g., high heritability does not imply direct genetic causation.
- Heritability depends on population composition and environment; it can be zero, undefined, or even infinite in contrived scenarios.
- Despite its strangeness, heritability provides limited insight into whether a trait can be influenced by typical genetic or environmental changes.
- The distinction between broad-sense and narrow-sense heritability matters, especially for evolutionary predictions.