Simulation Suggests that Repeated Supplementations from the Wild into Captive Population Reduce but Cannot Eliminate Inbreeding

Citation: Ganesh, VV, Kumaran, V, King, JE, Kiatfuangfung, P, Seah, ZX, Ling, MHT. 2024. Simulation Suggests that Repeated Supplementations from the Wild into Captive Population Reduce but Cannot Eliminate Inbreeding. Acta Scientific Agriculture 8(8): 31-35.

Link to [abstract].

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Captive population can suffer from inbreeding due to founder’s effect and supplementation from the wild has been considered to increase genetic diversity and reduce inbreeding. However, a recent simulation study suggests that one-off naïve supplementation from the wild cannot increase genetic diversity; thereby, suggesting more complicated supplementation regimes. Hence, we hypothesize that that repeated supplementations can better increase genetic diversity compared to single supplementation. Our simulations show that repeated 10% supplementations results in significantly higher genetic diversity (p-value ≤ 1.48E-03) compared to one-off 10% supplementation, and increasing the supplementation ratio of repeated supplementations results in higher genetic diversity (p-value ≤ 2.35E-04) compared to repeated 10% supplementations. However, increasing repeated supplementation ratios above 100% may not further increase genetic diversity. This implies that repeated supplementations have the potential to reduce but not eliminate inbreeding.