EnvThes – Thesaurus for long term ecological research, monitoring and experiments

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Preferred term

litter size

Is replaced by

Definition

  • [A. C. P ERIPATO] Litter size is an important reproductive trait as it makes a major contribution to fitness. Generally, traits closely related to fitness show low heritability perhaps because of the corrosive effects of directional natural selection on the additive genetic variance. Nonetheless, low heritability does not imply, necessarily, a complete absence of genetic variation because genetic interactions (epistasis and dominance) contribute to variation in traits displaying strong heterosis in crosses, such as litter size... , "The number of offspring produced at one birth by an animal.

Broader concept

Entry terms

  • LS

Scope note

  • MS Academic Keywords

Creator

Editorial note

  • think about homonym (soil litter characteristics)

URI

http://vocabs.lter-europe.net/EnvThes/msa0611

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