[R-sig-ME] Animal model residual value

[Pierre de Villemereuil]

Hi,

It depends on what you call "plasticity". Most often, plasticity is defined as the part of phenotypic variability that varies according to environment. Without an experimental settings or environmental replications, it's very hard to distinguish from random phenotypic variability.

I've heard people considering that the environmental variance is a measure of plasticity, but it seems to me that this is a huge assumption that random variability is negligible, especially if you have only 1 environment.

Cheers,
Pierre.

On Monday, 8 May 2017 11:25:59 NZST Walid wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I have a question on a certain assumption made regarding the 'animal' 
> model when implemented in a quantitative genetic study for a trait. 
> While reading van Benthem et al. (2016), the author mentions that the 
> residual (environmental) value, in the additive partitioning assumed by 
> the model, captures plasticity. Does this assumption always hold? or 
> only in the case where we model the maternal, permanent environment and 
> common environment?
> 
> My question is for the purpose of estimating the plasticity of a fixed 
> heritable life-history trait (occurs only once during individual 
> lifetime). Since there are no explicit methods to estimate individual 
> plasticity in a non-labile trait, I am attempting to see if I can 
> circumvent this by using the 'animal' model based on the assumption 
> mentioned above.
> 
> Thank you
> 
>