that some physiological mechanisms that underlie LR (variously described) seen in some rodent genotypes and in humans are very similar and that the same sets of genes underlie those physiological mechanisms. If this is true then identifying a smaller set of LR-related phenotypes in humans and in mouse or rat by which to compare QTL data across species using syntenic mapping could be successful. This was accomplished for a small set of alcohol-related phenotypes [see Ehlers et al., this issue (Ehlers et al. 2010)] and in fact some QTLs were found to be syntenic, even though the exact phenotypes between humans and mice did not necessarily overlap. These studies demonstrate how this technique might be useful in the search for genes underlying alcohol-related phenotypes in multiple species. However, these findings also suggest that establishing exact phenotypic matches in humans and rodents may not be necessary or even optimal for determining whether similar genes influence a range of alcohol-related behaviors across species. We nonetheless advocate the pursuit of more consilient phenotypes as an additional important path for future studies, as such phenotypes would lead to better understanding of the more complex “LR” phenotypes at all species levels, and should help to
