Genomics advances the study of inbreeding depression in the wild.

ABSTRACT: Inbreeding depression (reduced fitness of individuals with related parents) has long been a major focus of ecology, evolution, and conservation biology. Despite decades of research, we still have a limited understanding of the strength, underlying genetic mechanisms, and demographic consequences of inbreeding depression in the wild. Studying inbreeding depression in natural populations has been hampered by the inability to precisely measure individual inbreeding. Fortunately, the rapidly increasing availability of high-throughput sequencing data means it is now feasible to measure the inbreeding of any individual with high precision. Here, we review how genomic data are advancing our understanding of inbreeding depression in the wild. Recent results show that individual inbreeding and inbr

SUBMITTER: Kardos M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5108213 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature