Matroclinous Inheritance of Behavioral Traits: Possible Mechanisms

Transmission of behavioral traits from mother to hybrids of first generation, revealed in researches performed under guidance of M.E. Lobashev and V.V. Ponomarenko since the middle of last century, is clearly adaptive and seems to be a phenomenon of general significance in biology. From the contemporary positions it may be explained by various genetic processes: sex-linked inheritance, cytoplasmic inheritance, maternal effect of nuclear genes, genomic imprinting. The review considers all of them with most attention to possible mechanisms of the late maternal effect of nuclear genes.