Incorporation of competitive effects in forest tree or animal breeding programs.

Incorporation of Competitive Effects in Breeding Programs

Incidence of Mutation for Silver Coat Color in Black Forest Horses

Black Forest horses are typically chestnut colored with flaxen mane and tail. However, as their coat color can get very dark, they are sometimes also indicated as silver, a color depending on a black base color. To analyse if the silver allele is present in the Black Forest horse population, we genotyped 250 horses of this breed for formerly reported coat color mutations within MC1R and SILV. A...

Mind the gap: treefalls as drivers of parental trade‐offs

Tree-fall gaps are small-scale disturbances whose formation, colonization, and role in forest dynamics are well documented, but whose effects on animal ecology are still greatly overlooked, except for studies comparing species richness of gaps 6+ months old to that in the closed canopy. Other factors associated with the invasion of fresh tree-fall gaps such as animal breeding adaptations have b...

Identification of genes and alleles influencing wood development in Eucalyptus

The goal of many forest tree breeding programs is to increase the quantity and quality of wood products from plantations. Due to their outcrossing breeding systems, long generation times and relatively short history of domestication, breeding populations of most forest trees closely resemble the wild state. Consequently, vast stores of genetic variation are available for selection. Because wood...

Genomic and physiological approaches to advancing forest tree improvement.

The recent completion of a draft sequence of the poplar (Populus trichocarpa Torr. & Gray ex Brayshaw) genome has advanced forest tree genetics to an unprecedented level. A "parts list" for a forest tree has been produced, opening up new opportunities for dissecting the interworkings of tree growth and development. In the relatively near future we can anticipate additional reference genome sequ...