Latest Inbreeding Stories
For a bigger harvest and faster results: The University of Hohenheim, the MPI for Molecular Plant Physiology and the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research in Gatersleben start a new chapter in plant breeding In order to breed new varieties of corn with a higher yield faster than ever before, researchers at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, Germany, and other institutions are relying on a trick: early selection of the most promising parent plants based on their...
A new National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) study has raised concerns that killer whales in the Puget Sound could be facing a loss of genetic diversity due to inbreeding.The NOAA study, which was published online this month in the Journal of Heredity, followed the Washington-based whale species and studied their mating habits. They discovered that some of the offspring had been produced as a result of matings within the same pod or social subgroup, the researchers said...
New research has found that in urban fox families, the mothers are the ones who decide which cubs stay and which must leave. Red foxes have successfully established themselves in urban areas, living in family groups with a dominant male-female pair and a varying number of subordinate adults, according to the researchers. Some of the cubs remain in the family group for the rest of their lives, while others leave to search for another family to join. Scientists have hypothesized what drives...
A research team led by Teh-hui Kao, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State University, in collaboration with a team lead by Professor Seiji Takayama at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology in Japan, has discovered a large suite of genes in the petunia plant that acts to prevent it from breeding with itself or with its close relatives, and to promote breeding with unrelated individuals. In much the same way that human inbreeding sometimes results in genetic...
Fewer males than females are surviving the negative effects of inbreeding in a reintroduced population of a rare New Zealand bird, reports new research published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.Studying a population of the endangered New Zealand Hihi, researchers from the Zoological Society of London found that male survival rate was 24 per cent lower than their female siblings during early development, and as chicks.The researchers analysed 98 clutches on Tiritiri Matangi Island, a...
Inbred male sperm have been found to fertilize fewer eggs when in competition with non-inbred males according to a new study by the University of East Anglia.Research into the breeding habits of the red flour beetle, published June 15 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, shows that the reduced fitness of inbred beetles, known as 'inbreeding depression', reveals itself in competitive scenarios.Inbreeding is a potentially important problem in declining species across the world, and conserving...
New research suggests that Charles Darwin's family was a living human example of a theory that he developed about plants: that inbreeding could negatively affect the health and number of resulting offspring.Darwin was married to his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood. They had 10 children, but three died before age 10, two from infectious diseases. And three of the six surviving children with long-term marriages did not produce any offspring "“ a "suspicious" sign, researchers say, that these...
Agronomists at Iowa State University are offering doubled haploid technology that allows corn breeders to more quickly produce inbred lines for research or private use.Thomas Lübberstedt, associate professor and K.J. Frey chair in agronomy and director of the R.F. Baker Center for Plant Breeding, has launched a Doubled Haploid Facility at ISU that can develop pure, inbred corn lines in less time than traditional methods.Inbred corn lines have two copies of the same genome. They are...
OK, it takes two for human reproduction, and now it seems that plants and animals that can rely on either a partner or go alone by self-fertilization give their offspring a better chance for longer lives when they opt for a mate.That's the conclusion gleaned from more than 100 mini-evolution experiments involving nematode worms (Caenorhabditis elegans) at the University of Oregon. Reporting online Oct. 21 in advance of regular publication in the journal Nature, the UO team found that going it...
Declining bumblebee populations are at greater risk of inbreeding, which can trigger a downward spiral of further decline. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology have provided the first proof that inbreeding reduces colony fitness under natural conditions by increasing the production of reproductively inefficient 'diploid' males.The sex of bumblebees is normally determined by the number of chromosome sets an individual receives. Males, born from unfertilised...
