Uncertainty in the mating strategy of honeybees causes bias and unreliability in the estimates of genetic parameters

Table 3 Errors in genetic parameter estimates when sires for controlled mating were not correctly modeled in the pedigree

Sire pedigree modeling for controlled mating	\({\widehat{\upsigma }}_{{\text{W}}}^{2}\)			\({\widehat{\upsigma }}_{{\text{Q}}}^{2}\)			\({\widehat{{\text{r}}}}_{{\text{WQ}}}\)
Sire pedigree modeling for controlled mating	Relative bias (%)	Relative SE (%)	% strong deviations	Relative bias (%)	Relative SE (%)	% strong deviations	Bias	SE
Controlled mating strategy: SS
C_dummySS_p/DPQdam	− 27.03	14.85	66	− 6.67	17.25	28	0.248	0.174
C_dummySS_p/Q	15.08	25.38	48	2.68	20.06	32	− 0.111	0.168
C_PS_P	6.58	23.88	44	16.15	21.80	42	0.069	0.169
Controlled mating strategy: PS
C_SS_P	− 26.90	14.08	68	− 22.71	14.93	60	0.062	0.166
C_dummySS_p/DPQdam	− 32.27	12.82	84	− 22.46	15.59	59	0.194	0.176
C_dummySS_p/Q	3.67	22.25	38	− 14.02	17.32	44	− 0.139	0.180

\({\widehat{\upsigma }}_{{\text{W}}}^{2}\), \({\widehat{\upsigma }}_{{\text{Q}}}^{2}\) and \({\widehat{{\text{r}}}}_{{\text{WQ}}}\): estimates of the genetic variances and correlation for worker and queen effect
Strong deviations are those that differ by more than 20% from the true values. The relative bias was calculated as \(\left(\frac{1}{{n}_{rep}}\sum_{1}^{{n}_{rep}}\left(\frac{{\widehat{\upsigma }}_{{\text{A}}}^{2}-{\upsigma }_{{\text{A}}}^{2}}{{\upsigma }_{{\text{A}}}^{2}}\right)\right)\). The relative standard error (SE) was the standard deviation across replicates of the relative difference between estimates and the true value
Controlled mating strategy in the simulation: SS (single sire) and PS (pseudo-sire) mating
Sire pedigree modeling for controlled mating: C_SS_P, C_dummySS_P/DPQdam, C_dummySS_P/Q, C_PS_P: controlled mated queens are assigned, respectively, in the pedigree single sires, dummy single sires per dam of DPQ(s), dummy single sires per mated queen, pseudo-sires

ISSN: 1297-9686