Genetic Determinism of Fearfulness, General Activity and Feeding Behavior in Chickens and Its Relationship with Digestive Efficiency

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• 作者：Sandrine Mignon-Grasteau ; Céline Chantry-Darmon ; Marie-Yvonne Boscher…
• 关键词：Gallus gallus domesticus ; Digestive efficiency ; QTL ; Heritability ; Fear ; Feeding behavior
• 刊名：Behavior Genetics
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：January 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：47
• 期：1
• 页码：114-124
• 全文大小：
• 刊物类别：Biomedical and Life Sciences
• 刊物主题：Clinical Psychology; Health Psychology; Public Health;
• 出版者：Springer US
• ISSN：1573-3297
• 卷排序：47

文摘

The genetic relationships between behavior and digestive efficiency were studied in 860 chickens from a cross between two lines divergently selected on digestive efficiency. At 2 weeks of age each chick was video-recorded in the home pen to characterize general activity and feeding behavior. Tonic immobility and open-field tests were also carried out individually to evaluate emotional reactivity (i.e. the propensity to express fear responses). Digestive efficiency was measured at 3 weeks. Genetic parameters of behavior traits were estimated. Birds were genotyped on 3379 SNP markers to detect QTLs. Heritabilities of behavioral traits were low, apart from tonic immobility (0.17–0.18) and maximum meal length (0.14). The genetic correlations indicated that the most efficient birds fed more frequently and were less fearful. We detected 14 QTL (9 for feeding behavior, 3 for tonic immobility, 2 for frequency of lying). Nine of them co-localized with QTL for efficiency, anatomy of the digestive tract, feed intake or microbiota composition. Four genes involved in fear reactions were identified in the QTL for tonic immobility on GGA1.