Increasing levels of inbreeding is a threat against the viabi lity of the Scandinavian wolf population. A study just coming out in the new journal PLoS ONE now demonstrates that inbreeding is not affecting the wolves as badly as expected. The results show that it is the most genetically variable wolf individuals that are recruited into the breeding population. An important consequence of this action of natural selection is that the negative effects of inbreeding are accumulating much slower than previously believed.
The wolf was exterminated in the Scandinavian peninsula by the 1960-ies. The present Scandinavian population of approximately 150 animals was founded by three immigrants from the larger Russian-Finnish population; a pair around 1980 and a single male ten years later. With so few individuals founding the population the level of inbreeding is high.
If the pattern seen in the Scandinavian wolf population holds to be general, active introductions is only required to be done at rather long intervals in order to maintain the genetic variation of populations.
Inbreeding is more likely to take place in small populations and may contribute to further decline and eventual extinction.It has therefore become a key objective for conservation geneticists to monitor genetic variation and to measure the occurrence of inbreeding in threatened populations.
Read the press report from PloS
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