Graphical abstract of consumer acceptance and characteristic of fried ripened curd cheese
An effective realization of breeding programs in zoos is strongly determined by completeness of animal pedigree information. The knowledge of pedigree structure allows to maintain optimal genetic variability of a given population. The aim of this study was to estimate the parameters describing the pedigree structure of American bison housed in zoos in the context of further management of the population. Finally, 4269 American bison were analysed (1883 males, 2217 females, and 169 with unknown sex). The registered animals were born between years 1874 and 2013. The following pedigree parameters were estimated: number of fully traced generations, number of complete generations equivalent, index of pedigree completeness, individual inbreeding coefficients, increase of inbreeding for each individual, effective population size, and genetic diversity. The maximum number of fully traced generations was 3 (the mean value is 0.693). The mean inbreeding coefficient for the population studied was 3.26%, whereas individual increase in inbreeding ranged from 0 to 25.12%. Although the pedigree parameters (including the inbreeding level) in the American bison obtained in the present study seem to be acceptable (from the perspective of other wild animal populations), they can be over/underestimated due to incomplete pedigree.
Mare milk is a valued and sought-after raw material for the production of innovative dairy products. The high demand, low supply, high price, and lack of accurate characterization of the milk of a given horse breed may provoke its deliberate fraudulent dilution. The aim of this work was to analyze the freezing point against a background of various selected technological parameters of Polish Coldblood mare milk. Research was carried out on multiparous Polish Coldblood mares from 5 to 8 yr of age with live weights between 618 and 851 kg. Their milk was tested on d 1, 3, and 7 postpartum and once a month for the next 9 mo of lactation (n = 52). Milk from 13 mares, taken daily in mo 4 of lactation, was collected for the dilution study (n = 403). The basic composition of the milk was as follows: solids-not-fat, 84.4 g/kg, fat 15.1 g/kg, lactose 65.3 g/kg, and total protein 24.2 g/kg (made up of casein, 14.6 g/kg, and whey protein, 9.5 g/kg). The dominant amino acids were glutamic acid, proline, leucine, and aspartic acid. The mean freezing point during a 9-mo lactation was -0.557°C (coefficient of variation = -2.787; 5th to 95th percentile: -0.563 to -0.550°C). Based on our analysis, we adopted -0.550°C (from 3 to 6 mo) as the reference value for milk from the Polish Coldblood horse. Analysis of the model of changes in freezing point, after dilution, using the coefficient of determination and Akaike's information criterion, showed that a linear model could be recommended (y = 79.35 + 144.35x). Addition of 1% water increased the freezing point of Polish Coldblood mare milk by 0.0069°C.
Survival is one of the most important traits to consider for limited animal populations under conservation programs. Here, we estimate the effects of inbreeding, geographical region (Europe, North America and other) and sex on survival at six points of life in American bison populations kept in zoological gardens. The data set consisted of 3893 animals, 1812 males and 2081 females, born between the years 1874 and 2013. We analyzed survival in terms of longevity and survival of the first day after birth. We applied regression analysis with a logistic model. Longevity was examined in terms of six time categories whereas the survival of the first day after birth as a binary trait. We find that the average longevity for the studied population was 5.21 years with a standard deviation of 6.75. The longevity was significantly affected by the sex: females survived on average longer than males. The median values of longevity were considerably lower than the averages and also conditioned by the sex. The largest number of individuals was recorded in survival up to the age of sexual maturity, equal to 43.6% of males and 30.75% of females. More females survived after reaching the age of sexual maturity. Survival of the first day after birth was not influenced by the calf's sex. There was also detected that the survival of individuals decreased with an increasing level of inbreeding, under relative small pedigree parameters for the population studied. It was also demonstrated that geographical region has a significant effect on the longevity of captive bison.
SummaryData arranged in a two-way contingency table can be obtained as a result of many experiments in the life sciences. In some cases the categorized trait is in fact conditioned by an unobservable continuous variable, called liability. It may be interesting to know the relationship between the Pearson correlation coefficient of these two continuous variables and the entropy function measuring the corresponding relation for categorized data. After many simulation trials, a linear regression was estimated between the Pearson correlation coefficient and the normalized mutual information (both on a logarithmic scale). It was observed that the regression coefficients obtained do not depend either on the number of observations classified on a categorical scale or on the continuous random distribution used for the latent variable, but they are influenced by the number of columns in the contingency table. In this paper a known measure of dependency for such data, based on the entropy concept, is applied.
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