Question: What is the role of inbreeding and outbreeding depression in creating spatial patterns of reproductive isolation among populations within a species? Hypothesis: A combination of inbreeding and outbreeding effects create an optimal crossing distance at which reproductive isolation is minimal. Organism: Iris atropurpurea Dinsm., an endangered and endemic Israeli plant, with a fragmented...

We tested the fitness consequences of introgression of fast-growing domesticated fish into a wild population. Fry from wild and domesticated rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) crosses, F1 hybrids, and first- and second-generation backcrosses were released into two natural lakes. Parentage analysis using microsatellite loci facilitated the identification of survivors, so fitness was estimated i...

Can we find the family trees, or pedigrees, that relate the haplotypes of a group of individuals? Collecting the genealogical information for how individuals are related is a very time-consuming and expensive process. Methods for automating the construction of pedigrees could stream-line this process. While constructing single-generation families is relatively easy given whole genome data, reco...

Avoidance of mating between related individuals is usually considered adaptive because it decreases the probability of inbreeding depression in offspring. However, mating between related partners can be adaptive if outbreeding depression is stronger than inbreeding depression or if females gain inclusive fitness benefits by mating with close kin. In the present study, we used microsatellite dat...

In this paper, we show that the likelihood-ratio measure (a) is invariant with respect to dominating sigma-finite measures, (b) satisfies logical consequences which are not satisfied by standard p values, (c) respects frequentist properties, i.e., type I error can be properly controlled, and, under mild regularity conditions, (d) used as an upper bound for posterior probabilities. We also discu...

Managers of threatened species often face the dilemma of whether to keep populations separate to conserve local adaptations and minimize the risk of outbreeding, or whether to manage populations jointly to reduce loss of genetic diversity and minimise inbreeding. In this study we examine genetic relatedness and diversity in three of the five last remaining wild populations of dama gazelle and a...

The male lifetime lekking performance was studied, and related to inbreeding-outbreeding in a wild population of black grouse (Tetrao tetrix) in central Finland between 1989 and 1995. Inbreeding was measured as the mean heterozygosity and mean d(2) of 15 microsatellite loci. We found a significantly positive relationship between mean d(2) and lifetime copulation success (LCS), while the relatio...