Acipenseriformes are composed of 25 sturgeon species and two paddlefish species distributed exclusively in the northern hemisphere. The Danube River and the Black Sea were originally inhabited by six sturgeon species but two are extinct and only four are still reproducing currently in the Lower Danube: Huso huso, Acipenser stellatus, A. gueldenstaedtii and A. ruthenus. Sturgeon species hybridiz...

Relationships between pedigree coefficients of inbreeding and molecular metrics are generally weak, suggesting that measures of heterozygosity estimated using microsatellites may be poor surrogates of genome-wide inbreeding. We compare three endangered species of gazelles (Gazella) with different degrees of threat in their natural habitats, for which captive breeding programmes exist. For G. do...

A recent study suggests that sex-specific dispersal rates can be quantitatively estimated on the basis of sex- and state-specific (pre- vs. postdispersal) F-statistics. In the present paper, we extend this approach to account for the hierarchical structure of natural populations, and we validate it through individual-based simulations. The model is applied to an empirical data set consisting of...

Giant tortoises, a prominent symbol of the Galápagos archipelago, illustrate the influence of geological history and natural selection on the diversification of organisms. Because of heavy human exploitation, 4 of the 15 known species (Geochelone spp.) have disappeared. Charles Darwin himself detailed the intense harvesting of one species, G. elephantopus, which once was endemic to the island o...

A collection of 238 eggplant breeding lines, heritage varieties and selections within local landraces provenanced from Asia and the Mediterranean Basin was phenotyped with respect to key plant and fruit traits, and genotyped using 24 microsatellite loci distributed uniformly throughout the genome. STRUCTURE analysis based on the genotypic data identified two major sub-groups, which to a large e...

Chilota sheep is a typical animal population from Chiloé Archipelago in the south of Chile. First sheep were introduced in Chiloé in 1568 with Spanish conquerors. In 2010 Chilota sheep was recognized as the first original breed of Chile. Blood samples were obtained from 40 Chilota individuals from 40 flocks spread throughout Chiloé Archipelago. A maximum of one individual per flock were sampled...

We discovered variable modes of parental care in a breeding population of color-banded Veeries (Catharus fuscescens), a Nearctic-Neotropical migratory songbird, long thought to be socially monogamous, and performed a multi-locus DNA microsatellite analysis to estimate parentage and kinship in a sample of 37 adults and 21 offspring. We detected multiple mating in both sexes, and four modes of pa...

The choice of summary statistics is a crucial step in approximate Bayesian computation (ABC). Since statistics are often not sufficient, this choice involves a trade-off between loss of information and reduction of dimensionality. The latter may increase the efficiency of ABC. Here, we propose an approach for choosing summary statistics based on boosting, a technique from the machine-learning l...

The present study was undertaken to determine the predisposition of one transitional disease on other in various dairy animals Punjab. For this purpose, a total 250 respondents were randomly selected and interviewed personally from parts Punjab through structured interview schedule. Among diseases farms, anoestrus found be high (59.00%) followed by mastitis (52.00%). Dystokia highly significant...