https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181002082420.htm
https://peerj.com/articles/5690/
News blurp and the original article. They found a survival difference
between spot patterns in giraffes. They also collected data indicating
that the spot pattern was heritable.
The news blurp gets it wrong in their impression that the trait is
maternally inherited. It is likely inherited just like most other
traits, but for the study they could only determine the mother's
relationship with her progeny. They could not determine who the father
was, so the father could not be used in the study. As you would expect
for a trait that was genetic the progeny were more similar to their
parent for the spot trait than they were to unrelated individuals. No
big whoop. The survival data would be of most interest. Now they have
to figure out why there is so much variation if there is a survival
difference. My guess is that survival is not totally correlated with
reproduction. The other variants obviously reproduce enough to be
maintained in the population. They have to produce more progeny and/or
live longer.
Ron Okimoto