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. 2005 Mar 22;1(1):17-20.
doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2004.0266.

Severe inbreeding depression in a wild wolf (Canis lupus) population

Olof Liberg  1 , Henrik Andrén, Hans-Christian Pedersen, Håkan Sand, Douglas Sejberg, Petter Wabakken, Mikael Kesson, Staffan Bensch
Affiliations

Severe inbreeding depression in a wild wolf (Canis lupus) population

Olof Liberg et al. Biol Lett. .

Abstract

The difficulty of obtaining pedigrees for wild populations has hampered the possibility of demonstrating inbreeding depression in nature. In a small, naturally restored, wild population of grey wolves in Scandinavia, founded in 1983, we constructed a pedigree for 24 of the 28 breeding pairs established in the period 1983-2002. Ancestry for the breeding animals was determined through a combination of field data (snow tracking and radio telemetry) and DNA microsatellite analysis. The population was founded by only three individuals. The inbreeding coefficient F varied between 0.00 and 0.41 for wolves born during the study period. The number of surviving pups per litter during their first winter after birth was strongly correlated with inbreeding coefficients of pups (R2=0.39, p<0.001). This inbreeding depression was recalculated to match standard estimates of lethal equivalents (2B), corresponding to 6.04 (2.58-9.48, 95% CI) litter-size-reducing equivalents in this wolf population.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Pedigree of the Scandinavian wolf population. Boxes indicate breeding pairs and arrows trace the ancestry of male (blue) and female (red) in each pair. Colours of boxes indicate how the genotype of the wolves in the pair was determined. Unfilled boxes indicate pairs with missing genotype. Pairs are fitted to the time-scale on top according to their year of first reproduction. The number of winter pups in first litters and inbreeding coefficients for offspring, are indicated. If number of pups was determined as a range (e.g. 4–5) we used the mean value (e.g. 4.5).
Figure 2
Figure 2
The number of pups that survived to winter for first-born litters in relation to the inbreeding coefficient of the pups. Small dots refer to one data point each, medium sized to two data points and large to four data points. Inbreeding levels corresponding to parent–offspring or full-sibling mating, and self-fertilization are indicated.
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