Fig. 4From: Trait heritability in major transitionsRelative heritability of collective size to cell size when the number of cells per collective varies. When the coefficient of variation for cell number per collective (CVN) is low, collective-level heritability is always higher than cell-level heritability, but this advantage is undercut by increased variation in cell number. The ratio of collective- to cell-level heritability is maximized when developmental variation in cell size (σ) is large and variation in the number of cells per collective is zero. The pink contour denotes a ratio of collective-level to cell-level heritability of 1. In these simulations, we consider collectives with a genetic mean of 32 cells grown for seven generations. The colormap denotes collective-level heritability divided by cell-level heritability for size across 1024 σ, CVN combinationsBack to article page