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[satan]

Do we know whether the physical traits of dwarven babies are passed down from their parents or randomized at birth? The wiki doesn't talk about it at all.

[Bumber]

Last I heard, there's some inheritance of attributes (e.g., strength) but the random component is too large for anything like a dwarven supersoldier program.

IIRC, stuff like hair color, etc., is more predictable. Some stuff (hair style) might be affected by civilization, too.

Edit:
Here's some data on animal genetics with turkeys. It was found that there was a slight preference for the parent's values compared to the average for their species. It was close enough to be inconclusive and there was going to be a more extreme study on min/max turkeys, but it looks like it never got done.

Here's some info from ToadyOne:

Capntastic:   What are the inheritable traits parents can pass on to their children. Personality, preference for certain attributes, etc. ... a curse perhaps?
Toady:   Currently what we've got are the attributes ... vaguely the attributes to an extent being passed down. It's not like if the parents have two specific numbers it doesn't pick one or the other, but there's a little bit going on there. Then all of the colours, like eye colours, hair colour, I think that uses a dominant/recessive thing now where you pass on two copies and then it picks probably the colour with the lowest index; maybe there's an alphabetic bias right now on which genes are dominant, or it might be the first you listed, it could be the first one you list in the raws that's the dominant gene. I think that's it right now, just attributes and colours, the idea this time around was just to get our feet wet and get something working, and after that really it's easy to add new genes, easy to add all kinds of effects for them. I mean, I have to code it up, it's not something you can just mod in, and of course we'd have to have discussions about this; what's the extent to which personality is passed on versus it being environmental factors and so on, I'm sure we can have all kinds of wonderful arguments on the forums and so on, but right now we're just doing simple things that are pretty cut and dried like colours. Attributes ... it's not quite cut and dried there what passes along and what doesn't and so on, but I think right now that all the attributes pass along, whether or not that's accurate is another question. Also stuff like the shape of the nose and the height modifiers, basically anything called a modifier in the raws - how curly is your hair, how long is your nose, how far apart are your eyes, what colour is your skin/eyes/hair - all those pass along right now, they have genes to pass them along. As far as curses and stuff or whatever ... whatever those end up being we can link it in, but there's nothing right now of course.

[satan]

I am doing some experiments with dwarven eugenics and will post my research here for posterity.

-Honeymoon suites (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=157152.0) work just like they used to except marriages between dwarves with a large age gap are now possible.

-Hair color, facial features and eye color are genetic. White is a normal hair color that can be passed down, it is not a signifier of old age.

-Hairstyle seems to be randomized at birth.

-Some attributes might be genetic, but some randomization seems to be happening. This couple produced one child with high kinesthetic sense and strength and another with neither of those traits:


-I am not sure if skin color is genetic. Two of my brown dwarves have somehow produced a baby paler than themselves.



So far I have been breeding dwarves with silver hair because I think it is pretty, but I will start breeding dwarves with different physical features to get a better sense of which traits are dominant and which are recessive.

[DeKaFu]

In regards to colour genetics, I'm going to plug my old science thread from 2016.

I got in pretty deep with various experiments regarding gender-specific colours and non-vanilla situations, but the basic conclusions were: Colour stuff follows mendelian inheritance (two copies of each gene, each parent passes down one, dominant/recessive genes are a thing). Dominance is hierarchical based on the order the colours are listed in the creature's raw, with the colours listed first being dominant over the ones listed after them. In the default raws the colours are usually listed alphabetically so you can guess at the dominance based on alphabetical order.

This is assuming nothing has changed about it in the new version.

[satan]

In regards to colour genetics, I'm going to plug my old science thread from 2016.

I got in pretty deep with various experiments regarding gender-specific colours and non-vanilla situations, but the basic conclusions were: Colour stuff follows mendelian inheritance (two copies of each gene, each parent passes down one, dominant/recessive genes are a thing). Dominance is hierarchical based on the order the colours are listed in the creature's raw, with the colours listed first being dominant over the ones listed after them. In the default raws the colours are usually listed alphabetically so you can guess at the dominance based on alphabetical order.

This is assuming nothing has changed about it in the new version.

Very cool! Well, that explains how my brown dwarves produced a white baby. They both carried the recessive gene for pale skin. Thanks!

[ArmokGoB]

Last I heard, there's some inheritance of attributes (e.g., strength) but the random component is too large for anything like a dwarven supersoldier program.

I'm curious if you could apply selective pressure to produce dwarves with certain attributes nonetheless. It would be hard to account for all the variables to see how much attributes are contributing to the results of combat/labor. It would also probably take a hundred years or more and give negligible benefits.

[Bumber]

I'm curious if you could apply selective pressure to produce dwarves with certain attributes nonetheless. It would be hard to account for all the variables to see how much attributes are contributing to the results of combat/labor. It would also probably take a hundred years or more and give negligible benefits.

The problem is that breeding two super dwarves will likely result in dwarves with maybe half their stats superdwarven, and the rest just above average. One generation after that, most of the remaining super stats become above average, and some of the above average become below average.

Within just 2 generations you're back to regular dwarves with the standard distribution of stats. You can't sustain it, let alone get there through breeding in the first place. (I don't know if dwarves inherit stat training or not.)