Figure 1.

The absolute correlation of heterozygosity (H) and pedigree-based inbreeding coefficients (F) with fitness increases with the number of microsatellites and pedigree depth, respectively. Fitness components: (a) lifespan, (b) lifetime number of banded offspring, (c) lifetime number of adult offspring and (d) lifetime number of adult offspring produced by adult individuals. The correlation between F and fitness increases with the number of ancestral generations available (horizontal coloured lines; legend along right axis). F calculated from seven ancestral generations explained as much variation as F calculated from the full pedigree. The correlation between H and fitness increased with the number of loci (solid black line; the dark grey area shows the central 95% of sampling variation), but is always weaker than the correlation with F based on the complete pedigree. The correlation with heterozygosity based on simulated neutral and unlinked loci (and thus with lower amounts of Mendelian noise) is indicated by the dashed black line, and the light grey area shows the central 95% of simulated values. Note that all correlations with H were positive, and all correlations with F were negative (electronic supplementary material, figures S2 and S3).