The shy bold continuum is both a fundamental aspect of human behavior and a relatively stable behavioral trait for many other species.
In sexual (elastic) species, any behavioral trait (for example, altruistic behavior) is usually determined by the greater number of genes and many of these genes have (due to epistasis) a context-dependent influence on the particular trait.
Central to the stimulus/response relationships of honey bee foraging behavior and pollen hoarding is the behavioral trait of sensory sensitivity to sucrose (an important sugar in nectar).
Our results in humans are in favor of the hypothesis that the behavioral trait of vulnerability to drug dependence behavior is expressed through SS.
The fundamental difference in the latter behavior in line 8 versus line 7 may be explained by a specific behavioral trait that has been distinctly co-selected in line 8.
Dr. Todd A. Blackledge has supplied an answer in the case of a complex behavioral trait, web spinning by spiders.
The slope of this line reveals the heritability of the behavioral trait in that population.
Evidence of genetic basis, which has been furnished by selective breeding and by functional correlation implying natural selection, is silent about how a behavioral trait is realized in individual ontogeny (the development of an organism from conception to adulthood).
In other words, the researcher tries to identify the ecological challenges, or "selection pressures," faced by a species and then investigates how a particular behavioral trait helps individuals surmount these obstacles so that they can survive and reproduce.
One way to measure the heritability of a behavioral trait is to determine the average values of the behaviour for the parents and offspring in a sample of families within a population and calculate the linear relationship between offspring values and parental values.
To the extent that behavioral variability is caused by environmental factors, DZ twins should be as similar for the behavioral trait as are MZ twins because both types of twins are reared by the same parents in the same place at the same time.
