CNRS, UPS, ENFA, EDB (Laboratoire Evolution et Diversité Biologique), UMR5174, Toulouse, France.
PLoS One. 2013 May 20;8(5):e61254. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0061254. Print 2013.
Transgenerational sources of biological variation have been at the center of evolutionary studies ever since Darwin and Wallace identified natural selection. This is because evolution can only operate on traits whose variation is transmitted, i.e. traits that are heritable. The discovery of genetic inheritance has led to a semantic shift, resulting in the tendency to consider that only genes are inherited across generations. Today, however, concepts of heredity are being broadened again to integrate the accruing evidence of non-genetic inheritance, and many evolutionary biologists are calling for the inclusion of non-genetic inheritance into an inclusive evolutionary synthesis. Here, we focus on social heredity and its role in the inheritance of behavioral traits. We discuss quantitative genetics methods that might allow us to disentangle genetic and non-genetic transmission in natural populations with known pedigrees. We then propose an experimental design based on cross-fostering among animal cultures, environments and families that has the potential to partition inherited phenotypic variation into socially (i.e. culturally) and genetically inherited components. This approach builds towards a new conceptual framework based on the use of an extended version of the animal model of quantitative genetics to integrate genetic and cultural components of behavioral inheritance.
跨代生物变异源一直是进化研究的核心，自达尔文和华莱士识别出自然选择以来就是如此。这是因为进化只能作用于可遗传变异的特征，即具有遗传性的特征。遗传的发现导致了语义的转变，使得人们倾向于认为只有基因才会在代际间遗传。然而，如今遗传概念再次被拓宽，以整合非遗传遗传的累积证据，许多进化生物学家呼吁将非遗传遗传纳入包容性进化综合。在这里，我们专注于社会遗传及其在行为特征遗传中的作用。我们讨论了数量遗传学方法，这些方法可能使我们能够在具有已知谱系的自然种群中分辨出遗传和非遗传的传递。然后，我们提出了一个基于动物文化、环境和家庭之间交叉抚育的实验设计，该设计有可能将遗传表型变异分为社会（即文化）遗传和遗传遗传部分。这种方法构建了一个新的概念框架，该框架基于使用扩展的数量遗传学动物模型来整合行为遗传的遗传和文化成分。
