What is the rationale for comparing identical and fraternal twins in order to measure heritability of traits?
Identical or monozygotic (MZ) twins share nearly 100% of their genes, which means most differences between them the twin are due to experiences that one twin has without the other. Fraternal or dizygotic (DZ) twins share only about 50% of their genes, the same as any other sibling.
The classical twin design compares the similarity of monozygotic and dizygotic twins. If traits from the study of identical twins show considerably more similarity than fraternal twins, it implicates that genes play an important role in these traits. Twins share many aspects of their environment because they are born into the same family. If both monozygotic and dizygotic twins express similar traits, it can be concluded that environment plays an important role more than genes in the studied trait.
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