Parentage studies and family reconstructions have become increasingly popular for investigating a range of evolutionary, ecological and behavioural processes in natural populations. However, a number of different assignment methods have emerged in common use and the accuracy of each may differ in relation to the number of loci examined, allelic diversity, incomplete sampling of all candidate pa...

Genetic parentage analyses provide insights into mating systems and have revealed widespread evidence for polyandry in natural populations. Here, we use 5 microsatellite markers to estimate female mating rates in a feral population of green swordtails, Xiphophorus helleri, a live-bearing poeciliid fish that has become a model system in the study of precopulatory mate choice and mating competiti...

Genetic analysis of avian mating systems has revealed that more than 70% of monogamous species show incidence of offspring parentage that does not match the social partner. Extra-pair parentage (EPP) has been linked to a variety of factors, including size and symmetry of ornamental traits, coloration, resource availability, and local conspecific density. We examined how ornamental plumage trait...

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are plentiful in most genomes and amenable to high throughput genotyping, but they are not yet popular for parentage or paternity analysis. The markers are bi-allelic, so individually they contain little information about parentage, and in nonmodel organisms the process of identifying large numbers of unlinked SNPs can be daunting. We explore the possibili...

A study was conducted to assess the feasibility of applying a panel of 10 microsatellite markers in parentage control of beef cattle in Portugal. In the first stage, DNA samples were collected from 475 randomly selected animals of the Charolais, Limousin and Preta breeds. Across breeds and genetic markers, means for average number of alleles, effective number of alleles, expected heterozygosity...

Zoo and aquarium breeding programs rely on accurate pedigrees to manage the genetics and demographics of captive populations. Breeding recommendations are often encumbered, however, by unknown parentage. If an individual has any amount of unknown ancestry, the relationships between that individual and all other individuals in a population are ambiguous, and breeding recommendations cannot be ta...