Heritability - Overview

Overview

Estimates of heritability use statistical analyses to help to identify the causes of differences between individuals. Because heritability is concerned with variance, it is necessarily an account of the differences between individuals in a population. Heritability can be univariate – examining a single trait – or multivariate – examining the genetic and environmental associations between multiple traits at once. This allows a test of the genetic overlap between different phenotypes: for instance hair colour and eye colour. Environment and genetics may also interact, and heritability analyses can test for and examine these interactions (GxE models).

A prerequisite for heritability analyses is that there is some population variation to account for. In practice, all traits vary and almost all traits show some heritability. For example, in a population with no diversity in hair colour, "heritability" of hair colour would be undefined. In populations with varying values of a trait (e.g. see the image on the left), variance could be due to environment (hair dye for instance) or genetic differences, and heritability could vary from 0-100%.

This last point highlights the fact that heritability cannot take into account the effect of factors which are invariant in the population. Factors may be invariant if they are absent and don't exist in the population (e.g. no one has access to a particular antibiotic), or because they are omni-present (e.g. if everyone is drinking coffee).