Abstract
Temperament and hip dysplasia scores of 575 German shepherd dogs bred and evaluated by the United States Army's Division of Bio-Sensor Research between 1968 and 1976 were examined. The records represented 4 years, 18 sires, and 71 dams. Restricted maximum-likelihood procedures were used to obtain variance component estimates from which the heritabilities and genetic correlation were estimated. Heritability estimates for the temperament and hip dysplasia scores were 0.51 and 0.26, respectively. The genetic correlation between the two traits was estimated as −0.33. Males showed significantly higher temperament scores than females.
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Mackenzie, S.A., Oltenacu, E.A.B. & Leighton, E. Heritability estimate for temperament scores in German shepherd dogs and its genetic correlation with hip dysplasia. Behav Genet 15, 475–482 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01066240
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01066240