Heredity of stress-related cortisol response in androgenetic common carp ( Cyprinus carpio L.)

Abstract

The aim of this paper was to estimate the heritability for the intensity of the stress-related cortisol response in common carp ( Cyprinus carpio L.) using androgenetic progeny groups. For this, 660 androgenetic individuals (age: 110 days) were subjected to a 9°C cold shock and blood sampled 20 min after onset of the shock. Heritabilities were estimated for weight, length, condition factor ( K), and plasma cortisol, glucose and lactate concentrations using Gibbs sampling. Estimated heritabilities for the morphological traits weight and length were 0.09 (90% highest posterior density (HPD) range: 0.03–0.17) and 0.11 (0.04–0.21), respectively. The condition factor ( K), showed a medium heritability of 0.37 (0.20–0.62). Heritabilities for basal plasma glucose and lactate were 0.19 (0.10–0.33) and 0.56 (0.33–0.85), respectively. For stress-related cortisol increase, a high heritability estimate of 0.60 (0.37–0.90) was found. Although the height of this cortisol heritability has to be regarded with some reservation, due to confounding of some environmental effects with sire effects, the estimated heritability clearly shows that the intensity of the stress response due to a cold shock is heritable in the carp population used.