The genomic-level heritabilities of preparedness and plasticity in human life history: the strategic differentiation and integration of genetic transmissibilities

• Main Authors: Michael Anthony Woodley of Menie, Aurelio Jose Figueredo, Tomas eCabeza de Baca, Heitor Barcelos Ferraria Fernandes, Pedro Sofio Abril Wolf, Candace eBlack
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2015-04-01
• Series: Frontiers in Psychology
• Subjects: plasticity; heritabilities; preparedness; SD-IE; Transmissabilities
• Online Access: http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00422/full

The Continuous Parameter Estimation Model is applied to develop individual genomic-level heritabilities for the latent hierarchical structure and developmental dynamics of Life History (LH) strategy LH strategies relate to the allocations of bioenergetic resources into different domains of fitness. LH has moderate to high population-level heritability in humans, both at the level of the high-order Super-K Factor and the lower-order factors, the K-Factor, Covitality Factor, and General Factor of Personality (GFP). Several important questions remain unexplored. We developed measures of genome-level heritabilities employing an American sample of 316 monozygotic (MZ) and 274 dizygotic (DZ) twin dyads and a Swedish sample of 863 MZ and 475 DZ twin dyads. This novel heritability index measures individual genetic transmissibility, therefore opening new avenues for analyzing complex interactions among heritable traits inaccessible to standard structural equations methods. For these samples: (1) moderate to high heritability of factor loadings of Super-K on its lower-order factors is demonstrated, evidencing biological preparedness, genetic accommodation, and the gene-culture coevolution of biased epigenetic rules of development; (2) moderate to high heritability of the magnitudes of the effect of the higher-order factors upon their loadings on their constituent factors, evidencing genetic constraints upon phenotypic plasticity; and (3) that heritability of the LH factors, of factor loadings, and of the magnitudes of the correlations among factors are weaker among those with slower LH speeds, demonstrating that inter-individual variation in transmissibility is a function of individual socioecological selection pressures.