Modeling breeding programs considering social behavior in large groups of farmed fish

Abstract

Breeding programs are essential in aquaculture, improving economically and environmentally important traits. In aquaculture systems, animals are raised in large groups, where social interactions are frequent and can influence individual performance. In these circumstances, indirect genetic effects can play an important role in the response to selection, and consequently, their effects on selection outcomes must be analyzed. This study aimed to evaluate the implications of heterogeneous social interaction effects on fish breeding programs using stochastic simulations. We simulated a fish breeding program with 2000 selection candidates from 1000 families formed by a partial mating design of 100 males and 100 females. Social interactions were simulated, affected by the target phenotype and two latent-personality traits. We investigated how genetic gains and phenotypic variances are affected by the magnitude and direction of social interaction effects on the target phenotype, different selection strategies, and the genetic correlations between the target phenotype and personality traits. Our results showed that increased social interaction effects lead to greater phenotypic variability in the target trait. Under mass selection, the genetic means of personality traits change, and these changes depend on the strength and direction of genetic correlations between the focal and personality traits. Conversely, group selection did not increase phenotypic variability but reduced genetic gain for the focal trait compared to mass selection. Moreover, group selection did not alter the genetic means of personality traits. However, this approach increased the rate of inbreeding per generation, which could be mitigated by optimizing the number of families per group.