Measuring relatedness between inbred individuals

Abstract

Genetic relatedness between individuals is an important measure in many areas of biology. However, some relatedness measures for use with molecular (allele) data assume that the individuals themselves are not inbred. Here, we present a new measure of relatedness based on the different modes of identity-by-descent for alleles that has an upper bound of 1 even when the individuals being compared are themselves inbred. This new measure is compared to several other measures of relatedness using several simple examples and pedigree data from the wolf population in Isle Royale National Park.

Keywords: coefficient of relationship; inbreeding; pedigree; wolves.