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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]
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 ...
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.
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).
The environment can directly affect the survival of a small population. Some detrimental effects include stochastic variation in the environment (year to year variation in rainfall, temperature), which can produce temporally correlated birth and death rates (i.e. 'good' years when birth rates are high and death rates are low and 'bad' years when birth rates are low and death rates are high ...
Inbreeding in a population reduces fitness by causing deleterious recessive alleles to become more common in the population, and also by reducing adaptive potential. The so-called "50/500 rule", where a population needs 50 individuals to prevent inbreeding depression, and 500 individuals to guard against genetic drift at-large, is an oft-used ...
Many conservationists argue that genetic rescue could create unforeseen problems for species at risk, and that it overlooks the underlying problems that push so many species to the brink of extinction, including habitat loss due to human development. [11] As with the term genetic pollution, 'genetic rescue' has political connotations.
Within this framework, Wright focused on the effects of inbreeding on small relatively isolated populations. He introduced the concept of an adaptive landscape in which phenomena such as cross breeding and genetic drift in small populations could push them away from adaptive peaks, which in turn allow natural selection to push them towards new ...