The ultimate goal of the Mexican gray wolf Canis lupus baileyi captive management program is reintroduction of healthy individuals into wild habitats. To this end, zoo population managers work to provide not only for the physical well-being but also for the genetic health of these animals. However, the very limited genetic founder base, exacerbated by breeding within three distinct lineages, re...

resource sustainability requires a thorough understanding of the influence of forest management programs on the conservation of genetic diversity in tree populations. to observe how differences in forest management affect the genetic structure of fagus orientalis lipsky (oriental beech), we evaluated thirteen beech sites across hyrcanian forests, based on six microsatellite loci. significant di...

The degree to which, and rapidity with which, inbreeding depression can be purged from a population has important implications for conservation biology, captive breeding practices, and invasive species biology. The degree and rate of purging also informs us regarding the genetic mechanisms underlying inbreeding depression. We examine the evolution of mean survival and inbreeding depression in s...

Inbreeding depression (reduced fitness of individuals with related parents) has long been a major focus of ecology, evolution, and conservation biology. Despite decades of research, we still have a limited understanding of the strength, underlying genetic mechanisms, and demographic consequences of inbreeding depression in the wild. Studying inbreeding depression in natural populations has been...

Genetic diversity in the U.S. Hereford population was characterized by examining the level and rate of inbreeding and effective population size. Pedigree records for 20,624,418 animals were obtained from the American Hereford Association, of which 96.1% had both parents identified. Inbreeding coefficients were computed and mean inbreeding (Fx) calculated by year from 1900 to 2001. Inbreeding in...

We examine the distribution of heterozygous sites in nine European and nine Yoruban individuals whose genomic sequences were made publicly available by Complete Genomics. We show that it is possible to obtain detailed information about inbreeding when a relatively small set of whole-genome sequences is available. Rather than focus on testing for deviations from Hardy-Weinberg genotype frequenci...

Recent progress in the genetic analysis of inbreeding depression in plants is reviewed. While the debate over the importance of genes of dominance versus overdominance effect continues, the scope of inferences has widened and now includes such facets as the interactions between genes, the relative abundance of major versus minor genes, life cycle stage expression, and mutation rates. The types ...

Animals most related or least related to current members of their breed were revealed by calculating the expected inbreeding of their future progeny. A sample of potential mates was chosen by randomly selecting 600 females from a recent birth year (1995). Relationships among the sample were computed by the tabular method. Relationships of other animals to the sample population were computed qui...