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Inbreeding is also used to reveal deleterious recessive alleles, which can then be eliminated through assortative breeding or through culling. In plant breeding, inbred lines are used as stocks for the creation of hybrid lines to make use of the effects of heterosis. Inbreeding in plants also occurs naturally in the form of self-pollination.
However, inbreeding also gives opportunity for genetic purging of deleterious alleles that otherwise would continue to exist in population and could potentially increase in frequency over time. Another possible negative effect of inbreeding is weakened immune system due to less diverse immunity alleles as a result of outbreeding depression. [6]
The Westermarck effect has gained some empirical support. [2] Proponents point to evidence from the Israeli kibbutz system, from the Chinese Shim-pua marriage customs, and from closely related families. In the case of the Israeli kibbutzim (collective farms), children were reared somewhat communally in peer groups, based on age, not biological ...
Genetic purging is the increased pressure of natural selection against deleterious alleles prompted by inbreeding. [1]Purging occurs because deleterious alleles tend to be recessive, which means that they only express all their harmful effects when they are present in the two copies of the individual (i.e., in homozygosis).
Charles Darwin was one of the first scientists to demonstrate the effects of inbreeding depression, through numerous experiments on plants. Darwin's wife, Emma, was his first cousin, and he was concerned about the impact of inbreeding on his ten children, three of whom died at age ten or younger; three others had childless long-term marriages.
The term coefficient of relationship was defined by Sewall Wright in 1922, and was derived from his definition of the coefficient of inbreeding of 1921. The measure is most commonly used in genetics and genealogy. A coefficient of inbreeding can be calculated for an individual, and is typically one-half the coefficient of relationship between ...
Inbreeding does not always result in negative fitness consequences, but when inbreeding is associated with fitness reduction it is called inbreeding depression. Inbreeding becomes of increasing concern as the level of homozygosity increases, facilitating the expression of deleterious alleles that reduce the fitness. Habitat fragmentation can ...
Globally, 8.5% of children have consanguineous parents, and 20% of the human population live in communities practicing endogamy. [ 3 ] [ 4 ] Theories on the developments of consanguineous marriage as a taboo can be supported as being both a social and a biological development.