Heritability Estimates of Certain Anthropometric Traits

The analysis of the phenotypic variability of the continuous variation traits among individuals and populations was habitually documented through the study of biologically related individuals, such as twin pairs, identical as well as biological and adopted siblings, parents and children pairs, and other kinds of relatives more or less distant. In the last hundred years there have been many reports on familial resemblance for anthropometric traits in a variety of populations having different genetic and environmental characteristics. The familial correlations of the different generation (parent-offspring individuals) and same generation (siblings) are considered as indicators of the degree of genetic determination of anthropometric traits, even though they can be influenced by some environmental factors like common environment, assortative mating and ontogenic age. The present study carried out to examine the heritability estimates of different anthropometric traits in a sample of nuclear families living in Ankara, Turkey. The estimation of heritability has been calculated from the degree of resemblance between relatives. In conclusion, the greater part of the variance of the given traits was found to be genetically determined.