Extra-pair reproduction is widely hypothesized to allow females to avoid inbreeding with related socially paired males. Consequently, numerous field studies have tested the key predictions that extra-pair offspring are less inbred than females' alternative within-pair offspring, and that the probability of extra-pair reproduction increases with a female's relatedness to her socially paired male...

The growth performance of inbred pigs coming from full-sib matings was compared to that of contemporary animals coming from the same sires mated to control dams. The animals belong to three strains of Iberian pigs with different histories of previous inbreeding. The data consisted of 1,615 weight records between 50 and 250 d of age from 229 pigs. The statistical model assumed the two parameters...

The widespread consensus among biologists is that, with a few exceptions, inbreeding leads to a loss of biological fitness. Animals in an inbred lineage are less likely to survive and less likely to reproduce than animals in more outbred lineages. This has been demonstrated many times in well-studied, naturally outbreeding species. Inbreeding can result in reduced fertility both in litter size ...

The hog deer (Axis porcinus) is a small deer whose natural habitat is the wet or moist tall grasslands in South and Southeast Asia. Wild populations have dramatically decreased in recent decades. While wild hog deer were recently acknowledged to be extinct in China, a few captive populations have been maintained. In the present study, we successfully employed the restriction-site-associated DNA...

Effects of inbreeding of animal and dam on estimates of genetic parameters and predictions of breeding values for five productive and reproductive traits of Piedmontese cattle were studied. Traits were (a) age at first insemination, (b) age at first calving, (c) 120-day weight, (d) yearling weight of males, and (e) yearling weight of females. Data for animals born from 1970 to 1995 were used. I...

Marriages among the Sikh minority of the Districts of Swat, Bunair and Shangla (NWFP, Pakistan) were studied where the frequency of consanguineous marriages was found to be 21%. Marriages with distant relatives were 29.4% in the population. The inbreeding coefficient for the population was calculated to be 0.0127. Only three types of first cousin marriages (MSD, MBD and FSD) were recorded. Marr...

The average inbreeding coefficient f of a population can be estimated in several different ways based solely on the genotypic frequencies at a single locus. The means and variances of four different estimates have been compared. While the four estimates are equivalent when there are two alleles, the best estimates when there are three or more alleles are based upon total heterozygosity (Formula...

We describe a simple method to compute the numerator relationship between any or all pairs of animals in the numerator relationship matrix. The method depends on output of the MTDFNRM program from the MTDFREML set of programs. An option of the MTDFNRM program creates a file that includes the inbreeding coefficient for each animal. The method also makes use of how the inbreeding coefficient is t...

We used microsatellite data to estimate levels of inbreeding in four species of solitary gall thrips that are in the same clade as the six species with soldier castes. Three of the four species were highly inbred (Fis 0.54-0.68), and the other apparently mated randomly (Fis near zero). These estimates, combined with previous data from species with soldiers, suggest that inbreeding is a pervasiv...