AUTHOR=Sauce Bruno , De Brito Reinaldo A., Peripato Andrea C. TITLE=Genetic Architecture of Nest Building in Mice LG/J × SM/J JOURNAL=Frontiers in Genetics VOLUME=Volume 3 - 2012 YEAR=2012 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/genetics/articles/10.3389/fgene.2012.00090 DOI=10.3389/fgene.2012.00090 ISSN=1664-8021 ABSTRACT=

Maternal care is critical to offspring growth and survival, which is greatly improved by building an effective nest. Some suggest that genetic variation and underlying genetic effects differ between fitness-related traits and other phenotypes. We investigated the genetic architecture of a fitness-related trait, nest building, in F2 female mice intercrossed from inbred strains SM/J and LG/J using a QTL analysis for six related nest phenotypes (Presence and Structure pre- and postpartum, prepartum Material Used and postpartum Temperature). We found 15 direct-effect QTLs explaining from 4 to 13% of the phenotypic variation in nest building, mostly with non-additive effect. Epistatic analyses revealed 71 significant epistatic interactions which together explain from 28.4 to 75.5% of the variation, indicating an important role for epistasis in the adaptive process of nest building behavior in mice. Our results suggest a genetic architecture with small direct effects and a larger number of epistatic interactions as expected for fitness-related phenotypes.