Heritability of acoustic signalling time in the Texas field cricket, Gryllus texensis

Hypothesis: Heritability estimates of total nightly signalling time will be equal for a contemporary data set in Austin (Texas) and an earlier data set collected 127 km away in San Antonio (Texas).\ud \ud Organism: Texas field cricket, Gryllus texensis (Gryllidae: Orthoptera). \ud \ud Background: A corpus of work has been done on Gryllus texensis in Austin, Texas with the underlying assumption that heritability values from San Antonio, Texas apply.\ud \ud Methods: Previous study – realized heritability estimated using an artificial selection experiment. Current study – narrow sense heritability estimated using parent–offspring,\ud full-sib/half-sib, and restricted maximum likelihood methods.\ud \ud Results: Heritability of total nightly signalling time was previously computed as 0.50 and 0.53 for the San Antonio crickets. However, heritability of total nightly signalling time in the Austin crickets is estimated at only 0.006 ± 0.045. In Austin, only a small portion (1.5 ± 11%) of\ud the genetic variance in total signalling time is additive