Cydia pomonella L. (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae) is considered to be rather sedentary, but some individuals undertake flights of several kilometres in the field. This paper investigates the genetic influence on this variability. The flight capacity was measured in the laboratory by a flight mill and its heritability was estimated for two different strains. The laboratory strain was kept for more than 45 generations and the field strain from Embrach (northern Switzerland) was recently collected in the field. The multiple‐trait‐restricted‐maximum‐likelihood method was used for the estimation of genetic variances and covariances. A mixed full‐sib/half‐sib design was applied for the field strain and a full‐sib design for the laboratory strain. The heritability of total distance was 0.57 for the field strain and 0.37 for the laboratory strain (both sexes). In addition, a heritability of 0.38 for total distance was estimated by parent‐offspring regression for the laboratory strain. All three values were significantly different from zero (P<0.05) and show that there is a significant additive genetic influence on flight capacity. The genetic correlations between total distance and other flight traits (total duration, flight velocity, longest flight) were between 0.84 and 1.00 for both strains and suggest that these traits actually belong to a single one. High genetic correlations were also found between total distance and the morphological traits body weight and wing length for the field strain, whereas a negative correlation was found between total flight distance and body weight for the laboratory strain. This difference between the two strains was interpreted as a possible trade‐off between flight capacity and fecundity.

Susceptibility to enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli with fimbriae F4ac is dominantly inherited in the pig. A three-generation pedigree was created to refine the position of F4acR on chromosome 13 comprising 202 pigs: eight parents, 18 F1 and 176 F2 pigs. The 17-point analysis indicates that F4acR lies between Sw207 and S0283. Recombinant offspring specify that the most probable order is Sw207-S0075-F4acR-Sw225-S0283. We observed six phenotypes for the three fimbrial variants F4ab, F4ac and F4ad. The two missing phenotypes F4abR-/F4acR+/F4adR+ and F4abR-/F4acR+/F4adR- indicate that pigs susceptible to F4ac are always susceptible to F4ab. Furthermore, a weak and a strong adhesion of F4ab and F4ad bacteria was observed. The weak receptor F4abR (F4abRw) was present only in pigs devoid of the receptor F4acR (F4abR+/F4acR-). In contrast, in pigs with the phenotype F4abR+/F4acR+, F4ab bacteria adhered to the majority of enterocytes. F4abRw constitutes a frequently observed phenotype whose inheritance is still unclear. Strong adhesion of F4ab and F4ac bacteria is most likely influenced by the same receptor that we name F4bcR. The number of F4ad bacteria that adhered to enterocytes was very variable in the adhesion test. Moreover, expression of F4adR was independent of age. Our segregation analyses indicated a dominant inheritance of F4adR, although the number of susceptible pigs was smaller than expected. We examined four genes as candidates for the F4acR locus: the transferrin receptor gene (TFRC) and three genes members of the glucosyl/galactosyltransferase family (B3GnT5, B3GALT3 and B4GALT4). Comparison of sequences from resistant and homozygous susceptible F4ac pigs did not reveal any causative single nucleotide polymorphism in the four genes. Two silent mutations at the positions 295 (C/T) and 313 (T/C) in B3GALT3 were found. Using the somatic cell hybrid panel, B3GnT5 and B3GALT3 were assigned to the chromosomal region SSC13q23-q41. No mutations were found in the cDNA sequences of these genes associated with the F4acR genotypes.

The aim of this study was to refine the localization of the receptor locus for fimbriae F4ac. Small intestinal enterocyte preparations from 187 pigs were phenotyped by an in vitro adhesion test using two strains of Escherichia coli representing the variants F4ab and F4ac. The three-generation pedigree comprised eight founders, 18 F1 and 174 F2 animals, for a total of 200 pigs available for the linkage analysis. Results of the adhesion tests on 171 F2 pigs slaughtered at 8 weeks of age show that 23.5% of the pigs were adhesive for F4ab and non-adhesive for F4ac (phenotype F4abR+/F4acR-; R means receptor). Pigs of this phenotype were characterized by a weak adhesion receptor for F4ab. No pigs were found expressing only F4acR and lacking F4abR. Receptors for F4ab and F4ac (F4abR+/F4acR+) were expressed by 54.5% of the pigs. Animals of this phenotype strongly bound both F4ab and F4ac E. coli. In the segregation study, the serum transferrin (TF) gene and 10 microsatellites on chromosome 13 were linked with F4acR (recombination fractions (theta) between 0.00 and 0.11 and lod score values (Z) between 11.4 and 40.4). The 11-point analysis indicates the F4acR locus was located in the interval S0068-Sw1030 close to S0075 and Sw225, with recombination fractions (theta) of 0.05 between F4acR and S0068, 0.04 with Sw1030, and 0.00 with S0075 and Sw225. The lack of pigs displaying the F4abR-/F4acR+ phenotype and the presence of two phenotypes for F4abR (a strong receptor present in phenotype F4abR+/F4acR+ and a weak receptor in phenotype F4abR+/F4acR-) led us to conclude that the receptor for F4ac binds F4ab bacteria as well, and that it is controlled by one gene localized between S0068 and Sw1030 on chromosome 13.

The study investigates the genetic diversity present as well as its development in the Brown Cattle population of Switzerland from pedigree information. The population consisted of three subpopulations, the Braunvieh (BV), the original Braunvieh (OB) and the US-Brown Swiss (BS). The BV is a cross of OB with BS where crossing still continues. The OB is without any genetic influence of BS. The diversity measures effective population size, effective number of ancestors (explaining 99% of reference genome) and founder genome equivalents were calculated for 11 reference populations of animals born in a single year from 1992 onwards. The BS-subpopulation consisted of animals and their known ancestors which were used in the crossing scheme and was, therefore, quite small. The youngest animals were born in 2002, the oldest ones in the 1920s. Average inbreeding was by far the highest in BS, in spite of the lowest quality of pedigrees, and lowest in OB. Effective population size obtained from the difference between average inbreeding of offspring and their parents was, mostly due to the heavy use of few highly inbred BS-sires, strongly overestimated in some BV-reference populations. If this parameter was calculated from the yearly rate of inbreeding and a generation interval of 5 years, no bias was observed and ranking of populations from high to low was OB-BV-BS, i.e. equal to the other diversity parameters. The high genetic diversity found in OB was a consequence of the use of many natural service sires. Rate of decrease of effective number of ancestors was steeper in BV than OB was, however, equal for founder genome equivalents. Founder genome equivalents were more stable than effective population sizes calculated from the difference between average inbreeding of offspring and parents. The five most important ancestors contributed one-third of the 2002-reference genomes of BV and OB, in BV all were BS-sires. The relative amount of BS-genes in the BV-genome increased from 59.2% to 78.5% during the 11 years considered.