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by SchaeferhundSchH on 06 June 2010 - 22:06
Does anyone know of any scientific studies or peer reviewed papers that have been published on dog genetics and/or breeding?
What I am looking for is specifically a study or atleast averages / percentages of breeding working dogs and how many on average in a litter come out as the breeder wants them to and how many turn out pet quality dogs.
Also to find out how important it is for a parent to have high drive and how much of the drive in a dog is based on its genetics, temperment and breeding and how much is handler created and how much of that is passed on. How much of the grips, nerves, antics, likes and dislikes are dependent on breeding and how much is created by the handler?
I am not looking for opinions, I simply am interested to see scientific studies on any of these.
thanks in advance
What I am looking for is specifically a study or atleast averages / percentages of breeding working dogs and how many on average in a litter come out as the breeder wants them to and how many turn out pet quality dogs.
Also to find out how important it is for a parent to have high drive and how much of the drive in a dog is based on its genetics, temperment and breeding and how much is handler created and how much of that is passed on. How much of the grips, nerves, antics, likes and dislikes are dependent on breeding and how much is created by the handler?
I am not looking for opinions, I simply am interested to see scientific studies on any of these.
thanks in advance
by darylehret on 07 June 2010 - 03:06
"how many on average in a litter come out as the breeder wants them to and how many turn out pet quality dogs"
Even if your intention is to filter out non-working dog breeders, I would fear the results are atrocious. When the majority of breeders often breed whatever two dogs are conveniently available and hope for the best, I'd hate to think what the average would be. "Above average" involves more than rolling the dice. It would be more informative to evaluate the median values of a particular group of breeders (i.e., West German workingline schutzhund sport breeders residing in Europe).
There isn't a scientific standard for measuring "breeder's satisfaction", or "drives" or "nerves" for that matter, so I'm not sure how you could get anything but opinions in this subject. There are many inherent problems with addressing your question as it was put.
"Drives" are based on a gene-environement interaction, and expressed differently in specific contexts, aside from the basic fact that there currently exists no precise methods of measuring their thresholds or magnitudes. "Nerves" are a quantitative value of multiple genetic traits, the phenotype of which no one here could agree on it's definition, much less actually measure its value.
Even the measured values that are assigned by a trial judge are nothing scientific, only opinions as devised by the masterminds behind the formulation of the test itself, and the judge's subjective perception of the dog's performance on a given day in a particular trial field. The results are a quantitative correlation of all the effects of the dog's genetics and environmental values and variances, and hopefully to "it's fullest" up to that particular time & place.
Gene/evironment studies are complex in that not only are there the relevant genes and environmental effects to consider, there is also the epistatic affects of other non-relevant trait loci that will bear it's influence on the phenotypic expression of a particular genotypic value. There is also the perscribed "fitness value" of the job that's to be performed. Then you can begin to delve in the additive aspects of daily routine living habits, socialization and environmental exposure, longterm affects of incident experience, training and conditioning, and the handler relationship that facilitates this process.
If you're having trouble accepting that genetic heredity is first and foremost important, remember; there are very few exceptional dogs that ever ascended from "nobody" backgrounds. Any improvements to the contrary are made in gradual moves, over the turn of generations. But for the complete and final evaluation of the dog, it all matters; genetics, environment, training, handling, job fitness, and so forth.
There's probably no greater single-source of relevant studies pertaining to working dogs, than what you find in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research or the events sponsored by The International Working Dog Breeding Association (IWDBA).
Even if your intention is to filter out non-working dog breeders, I would fear the results are atrocious. When the majority of breeders often breed whatever two dogs are conveniently available and hope for the best, I'd hate to think what the average would be. "Above average" involves more than rolling the dice. It would be more informative to evaluate the median values of a particular group of breeders (i.e., West German workingline schutzhund sport breeders residing in Europe).
There isn't a scientific standard for measuring "breeder's satisfaction", or "drives" or "nerves" for that matter, so I'm not sure how you could get anything but opinions in this subject. There are many inherent problems with addressing your question as it was put.
"Drives" are based on a gene-environement interaction, and expressed differently in specific contexts, aside from the basic fact that there currently exists no precise methods of measuring their thresholds or magnitudes. "Nerves" are a quantitative value of multiple genetic traits, the phenotype of which no one here could agree on it's definition, much less actually measure its value.
Even the measured values that are assigned by a trial judge are nothing scientific, only opinions as devised by the masterminds behind the formulation of the test itself, and the judge's subjective perception of the dog's performance on a given day in a particular trial field. The results are a quantitative correlation of all the effects of the dog's genetics and environmental values and variances, and hopefully to "it's fullest" up to that particular time & place.
Gene/evironment studies are complex in that not only are there the relevant genes and environmental effects to consider, there is also the epistatic affects of other non-relevant trait loci that will bear it's influence on the phenotypic expression of a particular genotypic value. There is also the perscribed "fitness value" of the job that's to be performed. Then you can begin to delve in the additive aspects of daily routine living habits, socialization and environmental exposure, longterm affects of incident experience, training and conditioning, and the handler relationship that facilitates this process.
If you're having trouble accepting that genetic heredity is first and foremost important, remember; there are very few exceptional dogs that ever ascended from "nobody" backgrounds. Any improvements to the contrary are made in gradual moves, over the turn of generations. But for the complete and final evaluation of the dog, it all matters; genetics, environment, training, handling, job fitness, and so forth.
There's probably no greater single-source of relevant studies pertaining to working dogs, than what you find in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research or the events sponsored by The International Working Dog Breeding Association (IWDBA).
by SchaeferhundSchH on 07 June 2010 - 04:06
darylehret thank you very much. That link to the "Journal of Veterinary Behavior" is exactly what I was looking for.
basically I am in just a sort of fun debate with someone about the cognative bias in the dog world about breeding and how everyone is spouting out all of this information about dog breeding and such with whats being passed on through genetics and how there is no scientific studies on this and he is frustrated no one has done studies on this. He insists that even though there are many variables there are other studies we have done with just as many variables included in the study and he thinks we should do the same with our dogs to better understand our breeding programs.
we are just playing devils advocates against each other and are curious to see if we can find some current already studied facts that we can throw into our debate.
basically I am in just a sort of fun debate with someone about the cognative bias in the dog world about breeding and how everyone is spouting out all of this information about dog breeding and such with whats being passed on through genetics and how there is no scientific studies on this and he is frustrated no one has done studies on this. He insists that even though there are many variables there are other studies we have done with just as many variables included in the study and he thinks we should do the same with our dogs to better understand our breeding programs.
we are just playing devils advocates against each other and are curious to see if we can find some current already studied facts that we can throw into our debate.
by darylehret on 07 June 2010 - 06:06
Much to the annoyance of a few particular folks on this database, I'm going to cut and paste some terms and statements relevant to your endeavor, that illustrates just how difficult it will be to resolve anything definite in your purpose, unless you greatly narrow the focus of your debate, and by means that are clearly measureable.
genotypic value: (aka genetic value) for a genotype is the average phenotypic value for all individuals with that genotype. (The variation observed among same-genotypes would include environmental variation as well as the effects of loci other than the one genotyped. For example, the various shades of sable could be additionally "genetically" affected by the black markings of the 'masking gene', or "environmentally" by the current season's affect on the thickness or shedding of coat, or the redness of pigment could be affected by the inclusion of owelo carrots in the diet.)
Six important concepts in quantitative behavioral genetics: The concepts of heritability and environmentability of polygenic traits are central to quantitative analysis in behavioral genetics.
1. heritability: the proportion of phenotypic variance attributable to or predicted by genetic variance. A measure, ranging from 0 to 1.0, of the extent to which observed individual differences can be traced in any way to genetic individual differences.
2. environmentability: the proportion of phenotypic variance attributable or predicted by environmental variance. It is also a quantitative index, ranging from 0 to 1.0, of the extent to which environmental individual differences underlie observable, phenotypic individual differences.
3. genetic correlation: correlation of genetic/genotypic values of one trait versus the genotypic values of another trait.
4. environmental correlation: correlation between the environmental values of two traits
5 gene-environment interaction: "It is not the gene and it is not the environment that is important. It is the interaction between the gene and the environment that is crucial.” Both genes and environment contribute to behavior (IOW, "nature AND nurture"). the actual relationship between the environment and a phenotype depends upon the genotype, or equivalently, the actual relationship between a genotype and a phenotype depends on the environment.
6 gene-environment correlation: when high genetic values for a trait experience environments with high values for the trait (or, the context of "job fitness")
Although these six are described at a conceptual level, it is important to recognize that behavioral geneticists try to quantify each of them—i.e., arrive at an actual number to estimate these six quantities and then judge how important this quantity is for a behavioral phenotype.
“The actual relationship between a genotype and a phenotype depends on the environment”
Even with the marvelous technology of modern genetics, it is not possible to directly measure genotypic values for polygenic traits. And it stretches imagination to suppose that we can measure environmental values for all those varying factors that influence a trait.
Heritability and environmentability are population concepts and statistics that apply only weakly to individuals.
Heritability depends on the range of environments and environmentability depends upon the range of genotypes.
by darylehret on 07 June 2010 - 06:06
Heritability and environmentability within populations are uninformative about differences between populations.
http://psych.colorado.edu/~carey/hgss/hgsschapters/HGSS_Chapter18.pdf
by gagsd4 on 07 June 2010 - 12:06
Not exactly what you are looking for, but related.
On identifying and categorizing temperament traits and how predictive puppy tests are...
http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/faculty/Gosling/reprints/AABS05DogPersonalityReview.pdf
http://www.aiica.org/doc/dominance_puppies.pdf
http://www.vef.hr/vetarhiv/papers/73-4/hvozdik.pdf
----Mary
by duke1965 on 07 June 2010 - 13:06
daryll , why would anybody be annoyed if you cut and paste
thats what you allways do , google , wiki , cut and paste
doesnot annoy me a bit
thats what you allways do , google , wiki , cut and paste
doesnot annoy me a bit
by darylehret on 07 June 2010 - 17:06
But the grief I get :!:
I can write well enough in my own words, but you know as well as I do, the criticism I often endure for sharing academic information. But really, it's the nature of the content. I don't deal with this subject matter in a professional capacity, except in my interpretation for personal use, so there's no sense in rewriting the book someone else more credible has already written. I might offer examples for comparison (like above), and that's about it. I'm saying "here's the information, draw your own conclusions". People would do better by learning to think for themselves, anyway.
My cut and paste is no different than someone posting workingdog videos that they didn't film themselves, no different than posting trial results of dogs you didn't compete with, or posting a link with the latest headlines in breed legislation. I'm much more careful about the sharing of my original ideas or information models, and even some of my sources, so don't expect anything useful to be given freely by me unless you know the secret handshake. But it doesn't hurt to point the way once in a while, either.
by duke1965 on 07 June 2010 - 17:06
so all the info on your website is not anything usefull
daryll , we had talks like this before , all statistics etc are somewhat usefull , but for me what is important , is what is going to be , not what once was , , like I asked You before , how will you use statistics of 10 or 20 or more years back , to breed better dogs today , how will it help you to pick the right male for your female , clearly google and wikipedia wont answer those questions for you
the same goes for the mendell laws , great to draw out all the small XXs and the big XXs ,usefull when looking at colours or other single issues , but we have to breed a whole dog , with looks , drives, courage and health
please draw me up a schematic overview based upon Mendels laws , of a complete combination your planning
thats not possible , so if you want to produce quality dogs , it all comes down to the stock available , the choises you make in breeding and selecting a pup and how its raised
daryll , we had talks like this before , all statistics etc are somewhat usefull , but for me what is important , is what is going to be , not what once was , , like I asked You before , how will you use statistics of 10 or 20 or more years back , to breed better dogs today , how will it help you to pick the right male for your female , clearly google and wikipedia wont answer those questions for you
the same goes for the mendell laws , great to draw out all the small XXs and the big XXs ,usefull when looking at colours or other single issues , but we have to breed a whole dog , with looks , drives, courage and health
please draw me up a schematic overview based upon Mendels laws , of a complete combination your planning
thats not possible , so if you want to produce quality dogs , it all comes down to the stock available , the choises you make in breeding and selecting a pup and how its raised
by Bark and Hold on 07 June 2010 - 18:06
Is this the pedigreedatabase??? An intellectual, informative debate that has managed to not lend itself to name calling. And valid points from both sides... BRAVO!!!
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