Essay: How can we estimate inheritance?

Inheritance is central in evolutionary studies. In this review I explain how inheritance can be estimated. Inheritance in the field is estimated using the fact that children inherit traits from their parents. Regressing offspring traits on parental traits gives an estimate of inheritance called heritability. I explain how heritabilities are calculated, discuss the biases that heritability estimates imply and discuss ways to resolve these problems. The biases I will talk about are: misidentified parents, the fact that heritability is variance dependent, maternal effects and shared environments of parents and offspring. Also, I will discuss that heritability estimates depend on the environment and heritability estimates are affected by selection. Finally, two alternative methods to estimate inheritance are discussed, crossing experiments and genomics. At last, I will give my vision on whether we should still use heritability estimates to estimate inheritance.