Inbreeding depression is of major concern for the conservation of threatened species, and inbreeding avoidance is thought to be a key driver in the evolution of mating systems. However, the estimation of individual inbreeding coefficients in natural populations has been challenging, and, consequently, the full effect of inbreeding on fitness remains unclear. Genomic inbreeding coefficients may ...

Conservation programs use breeding protocols to increase genomic divergence (by mating genetically dissimilar individuals) in an attempt to circumvent population declines resulting from inbreeding depression. However, disruption of either beneficial gene complexes or local genetic adaptations can lead to outbreeding depression, and thus, there should be a reduction in fitness of individuals at ...

In an implicit combinatorial optimization problem, the constraints are not enumerated explicitly but rather stated implicitly through equations, other constraints or auxiliary algorithms. An important subclass of such problems is the implicit set cover (or, equivalently, hitting set) problem in which the sets are not given explicitly but rather defined implicitly. For example, the well-known mi...

In this study, we developed 20 polymorphic microsatellite markers for the Korean black scraper, Thamnaconus modestus (Günther, 1877), Monacanthidae, and used them to compare allelic variation between wild and hatchery populations in Korea. All loci were readily amplified and demonstrated allelic variability, with the number of alleles ranging from 5-35 in the wild population and 5-22 in the far...

Cooperative biological systems are susceptible to disruption by cheating. Using the social bacterium Myxococcus xanthus, we have tested the short-term competitive fates of mixed cheater and wild-type strains over multiple cycles of cooperative development. Cheater/wild-type mixes underwent several cycles of starvation-induced multicellular development followed by spore germination and vegetativ...

The most common way by which social animals avoid breeding with relatives is for members of one or both sexes to disperse before reproducing [1]. In capuchin monkeys — as in most primates — males disperse while females benefit from lifelong relationships with maternal kin within the group [2]. If α-males — who sire most offspring in a given group — retain their rank for longer than 6 years, the...

Vigorous debates as to the evolutionary origins of culture remain unresolved due to an absence of methods for identifying learning mechanisms in natural populations. While laboratory experiments on captive animals have revealed evidence for a number of mechanisms, these may not necessarily reflect the processes typically operating in nature. We developed a novel method that allows social and as...

Yeast is a superb laboratory model organism, but little is known about its natural lifestyle. Recent studies of wild yeast are beginning to reveal details of Saccharomyces population structure and evolution that challenge assumptions about speciation and dispersal in microbes.

The difficulty of obtaining pedigrees for wild populations has hampered the possibility of demonstrating inbreeding depression in nature. In a small, naturally restored, wild population of grey wolves in Scandinavia, founded in 1983, we constructed a pedigree for 24 of the 28 breeding pairs established in the period 1983-2002. Ancestry for the breeding animals was determined through a combinati...

Age-related changes in immunity are well documented in humans and laboratory mammals. Using blood samples collected from wild Soay sheep, we show that pronounced differences in T-cell subsets and inflammatory markers amongst age classes are also evident under natural conditions. These shifts parallel those observed in mammals experiencing protected environments. We found progressive declines in...