Data from: The Quantitative Genetics of Sexually Selected Traits, Preferred Traits and Preference: A Review and Analysis of the Data

The maintenance of variation in sexually-selected traits is a puzzle that has received increasing attention in the past several decades. Traits that are related to fitness, such as life history or sexually selected traits, are expected to have low additive genetic variance (and hence, heritability) due to the rapid fixation of advantageous alleles. However, previous analyses have suggested that the heritabilities of sexually selected traits are on average higher than non-sexually selected traits. We show that the heritabilities of sexually selected traits are not significantly different from those of non-sexually selected traits overall or when separated into the three trait categories, behavioral, morphological, and physiological. In contrast with previous findings, the heritability of preference is quite low (h2 = 0.25±0.06) and is in the same range as life-history traits. We distinguish preferred traits as a category of sexually selected traits and find that the heritability of the former is not significantly different than sexually selected traits overall (0.48±0.04 vs. 0.46±0.03). We test the hypothesis that the heritability of sexually selected traits is negatively correlated with the strength of sexual selection. As predicted, there is a significant negative correlation between the heritabilities of sexually selected traits and the strength of selection. This suggests that heritabilities do indeed decrease as sexual selection increases but sexual selection is not strong enough to cause heritabilities of sexually selected traits to deviate from the same type of non-sexually selected traits.性选择性状（sexually-selected traits）的变异维持机制是近数十年来日益受到学界关注的难解谜题。与适合度相关的性状，如生活史性状（life history traits）或性选择性状，由于有利等位基因的快速固定，理论上应表现出较低的加性遗传方差（additive genetic variance），进而伴随较低的遗传力（heritability）。然而，既往分析显示，性选择性状的平均遗传力高于非性选择性状。本研究表明，无论整体分析还是按行为、形态、生理三大性状类别分别对比，性选择性状与非性选择性状的遗传力均无显著差异。与既往研究结论相悖的是，配偶偏好性状的遗传力极低（h²=0.25±0.06），且与生活史性状处于同一数值区间。本研究将偏好性状划分为性选择性状的独立类别，发现其遗传力与整体性选择性状无显著差异（0.48±0.04 vs. 0.46±0.03）。本研究检验了“性选择性状的遗传力与性选择强度呈负相关”这一假说，结果与预期一致：性选择性状的遗传力与选择强度之间存在显著负相关。这表明遗传力确实会随性选择强度的升高而降低，但当前性选择的强度尚未达到足以使性选择性状的遗传力偏离同类非性选择性状的程度。