Which properties of movement are the most heritable in mouse behavior?
This work is currently in progress. using SEE, I employ our extensive database of mouse open-field behavior in order to screen hundred of thousands of different movement patterns, and isolate those that are most determined by the genotype of the mouse, even when measured in different laboratories. The process of screening is somewhat complex and is still improved upon, but the resulting patterns can be discussed independently of how they were discovered, since they were measured and verified in data that was not used for the screening process itself.
Here are results from Pattern No. 1 in 10 genotypes across three different laboratories:
Each of the three series represents results from a different laboratory. The 10 genotypes on the horizonatal axis are the inbred strains: A/J, BALB/cByJ, C3H/HeJ, C57BL/6J, FVB/NJ, SJL/J, 129Si/Svlmj, CAST/EiJ and CZECHII/SeJ (see the Mouse Phenome Database for details). The vertical axis shows the percentage of time that the animal spent in this pattern, out of its total movement time during a 30 min session in an open-field arena. Each group included 3 - 6 animals and the graph presents the group means and standard errors.

The graph clearly shows that the within-group variability is not large relative to the whole range, and the results were quite reproducible in different labs. A conservative estimation of the Broad-Sense Heritability (that is, the percentage of variability contributed by the genotype) is about 74%.
This pattern is defined as the following combination:

Distance of 15-30 cm from the arena wall AND
High speed (40 - 60 cm/s) AND
moving in paralell to the wall (plus/minus 10 degrees).

Here is an example of an FVB/NJ mouse performing this pattern. On the left side you see an animation of the movement. The light blue arc represents the wall of the circular arena. The graph on the right shows the speed profile of the same movement. The data points that actually belong to the patterns are highlighted in red. The animation and graph show a two seconds interval including the pattern, but the animation might take slightly more than 2 seconds (because of limitations of the web browser, I believe) so you actually might be seeing the movement in slow motion:
And here is a DBA/2J mouse performing the same pattern:
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