There is a burgeoning interest in using insects as a sustainable source of food and feed, particularly by capitalising on various waste materials and by-products that are typically considered of low value. Enhancing the commercial production of insects can be achieved through two main approaches: optimising environmental conditions and implementing selective breeding strategies. In order to successfully target desirable traits through selective breeding, having a thorough understanding of the genetic parameters pertaining to those traits is essential. In this study, a full-sib half-sib mating design was used to estimate variance components and heritabilities for larval size and survival at day seven of development, development time and survival from egg to adult, and to estimate correlations between these traits, within an outbred population of house flies (Musca domestica), using high-throughput phenotyping for data collection. The results revealed low to intermediate heritabilities and positive genetic correlations between all traits except development time and survival to day seven of development and from egg to adulthood. Surprisingly, larval size at day seven exhibited a comparatively low heritability (0.10) in contrast to development time (0.25), a trait that is believed to have a stronger association with overall fitness. A decline in family numbers resulting from low mating success and high overall mortality reduced the amount of available data which resulted in large standard errors for the estimated parameters. Environmental factors made a substantial contribution to the phenotypic variation, which was overall high for all traits. There is potential for genetic improvement in all studied traits and estimates of genetic correlations indicate a partly shared genetic architecture among the traits. All estimates have large standard errors. Implementing high-throughput phenotyping is imperative for the estimation of genetic parameters in fast developing insects, and facilitates age synchronisation, which is vital in a breeding population. In spite of endeavours to minimise non-genetic sources of variation, all traits demonstrated substantial influences from environmental components. This emphasises the necessity of thorough attention to the experimental design before breeding is initiated in insect populations.

中文翻译：

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商业昆虫生产中实施选育的遗传参数估计


人们对使用昆虫作为可持续的食物和饲料来源越来越感兴趣，特别是通过利用通常被认为低价值的各种废料和副产品。提高昆虫的商业化生产可以通过两种主要方法来实现：优化环境条件和实施选择性育种策略。为了通过选择性育种成功地获得理想的性状，彻底了解与这些性状相关的遗传参数至关重要。在这项研究中，采用全同胞半同胞交配设计来估计幼虫大小和发育第七天的存活率、发育时间和从卵到成虫的存活率的方差成分和遗传力，并估计这些性状之间的相关性，在家蝇（Musca Domestica）的近交种群，使用高通量表型进行数据收集。结果显示，除了发育时间和发育第七天的存活率以及从卵到成年的存活率外，所有性状之间都具有低到中等的遗传力和正遗传相关性。令人惊讶的是，与发育时间（0.25）相比，第七天幼虫的大小表现出相对较低的遗传力（0.10），而这一性状被认为与整体适应性有更强的相关性。由于交配成功率低和总体死亡率高而导致家庭数量下降，从而减少了可用数据的数量，从而导致估计参数出现较大的标准误差。环境因素对表型变异做出了重大贡献，所有性状的表型变异总体上都很高。 所有研究的性状都有遗传改良的潜力，遗传相关性的估计表明这些性状之间存在部分共享的遗传结构。所有估计值都有很大的标准误差。实施高通量表型分析对于估计快速发育的昆虫的遗传参数至关重要，并促进年龄同步，这对于繁殖群体至关重要。尽管努力尽量减少非遗传变异来源，但所有性状都显示出来自环境因素的重大影响。这强调了在昆虫种群开始育种之前彻底关注实验设计的必要性。