Simple penalties on maximum likelihood estimates of genetic parameters to reduce sampling variation

Multivariate estimates of genetic parameters are subject to substantial sampling variation, especially for smaller data sets and more than a few traits. A simple modification of standard, maximum likelihood procedures for multivariate analyses to estimate genetic covariances is described, which can improve estimates by substantially reducing their sampling variances. This is achieved maximizing the likelihood subject to a penalty. Borrowing from Bayesian principles, we propose a mild, default penalty - derived assuming a Beta distribution of scale-free functions of the covariance components to be estimated - rather than laboriously attempting to determine the stringency of penalization from the data. An extensive simulation study is presented demonstrating that such penalties can yield very worthwhile reductions in loss, i.e. the difference from population values, for a wide range of scenarios and without distorting estimates of phenotypic covariances. Moreover, mild default penalties tend not to increase loss in difficult cases and, on average, achieve reductions in loss of similar magnitude than computationally demanding schemes to optimize the degree of penalization. Pertinent details required for the adaptation of standard algorithms to locate the maximum of the likelihood function are outlined.