NOVA-302 Biological Consequences of Selection

This course is organised as a joint NOVA PhD and master's course. The cource overlap with HFA-303.

The objective of this course is to provide a platform for understanding the biological changes occurring when applying (artificial) selection. The student should be able to reflect on the consequences from a scientific point of view and understand the physiological changes taking place.

The course will cover the following topics:

• Ethical aspects of animal breeding
• Growth and development - genetic scaling (Taylor)
• Maternal effects, social effects and group selection
• Genetic variation of behavioral traits
• Genotype x Environment interactions
• Robustness, trade-offs and adaptive capacity
• Modelling and the genetics of feed efficiency

Also, see description of contents of HFA-303.

Programme Outline

The course week will consist of lectures, group work, also seminars given by the PhD students. Teaching and tutoring will be distributed equally among the main teachers. Course days will start with lectures until lunch and group work and presentations by students after lunch. The course will start Monday morning and end Friday afternoon.

Post-Campus Assignment

The student will work on an assignments the week after the one-week seminar. The assignment will be graded according to the NMBU rules (pass/fail).

After the course the master's students should be able to:

• Reflect on the ethical aspects of animal breeding
• Summarize the consequences of artificial selection
• Predict direct, maternal and correlated effects of selection
• Describe the concept of social effects and group selection
• Apply the methods of genetic size scaling
• Understand mechanisms related to feed efficiency
• Describe the effect of selection on behavioral traits

(The learning outcomes are the same on the master's and PhD course. However, the students on the master's course are expected to meet the learning outcomes to a lesser degree.)