Fig. 4: Relative difference in the mean index accuracy between the Alternative and Base breeding schemes for potential sires and potential dams, for scenarios with a null genetic correlation between worker and queen effects within a trait.

Base: reference breeding scheme will complete phenotyping and a 2-years generation interval on both the dam and the sire path. Alt: accelerated breeding scheme in which only the early trait is phenotyped on potential dams, while potential sires are also phenotyped on the late trait. This partial phenotyping of the dams enables halving the dam generation interval to 1 year. The selection index accuracy was calculated as the correlation coefficient between the true and the estimated selection index. The relative difference in the mean selection index accuracy in the Alternative (Alt) and that in the Base breeding schemes was calculated within simulation runs and averaged across. Values shown are for the last year of simulation (year 30), expressed in precentages. Standard errors of relative differences in mean selection accuracy varied from 2% to 5%. The mean accuracy in Base, relative to which the differences for the accuracies in Alt are shown, varied from 0.46 ± 0.01 to 0.62 ± 0.01 depending on the scenario.