Data from: Parenting behaviour is highly heritable in male stickleback

Parental care is critical for fitness, yet little is known about its genetic basis. Here, we estimate the heritability of parenting behaviour in a species famous for its diversity and its behavioural repertoire: three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus). Male threespined stickleback are the sole providers of paternal care that is necessary for offspring survival, therefore this system offers the opportunity to study the inheritance of parental behavior when selection is primarily acting on males. Fanning behaviour is a conspicuous parental behaviour that is readily quantified in this species. We show that the heritability of fanning behaviour is ≥0.9, and significantly different from zero within a freshwater population. Moreover, there was abundant genetic variation for fanning behaviour, indicating that it could readily evolve. These results suggest that parenting behaviour is tractable for further genetic dissection in this system