Captive breeding genetics and reintroduction success

Robert, Alexandre

doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2009.07.016

Cited by 130 publications

(117 citation statements)

References 49 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

114

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Captive breeding programmes should aim at the creation and conservation of healthy, self-sustaining captive populations that resemble their wild counterparts as closely as possible both in behaviour and genetics (Frankham 2008;Robert 2009;Goncalves da Silva et al 2010;Ralls and Ballou 1986). By taking heed of this, managers can serve two needs:…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ex situ conservation genetics: a review of molecular studies on the genetic consequences of captive breeding programmes for endangered animal species

2011

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Captive breeding has become an important tool in species conservation programmes. Current management strategies for ex situ populations are based on theoretical models, which have mainly been tested in model species or assessed using studbook data. During recent years an increasing number of molecular genetic studies have been published on captive populations of several endangered species. However, a comprehensive analysis of these studies is still outstanding. Here, we present a review of the published literature on ex situ conservation genetics with a focus on molecular studies. We analysed 188 publications which either presented empirical studies using molecular markers (105), studbook analyses (26), theoretical work (38), or tested the genetic effects of management strategies using model species (19). The results show that inbreeding can be minimized by a thorough management of captive populations. There seems to be a minimum number of founders (15) and a minimum size of a captive population (100) necessary in order to minimize a loss of genetic diversity. Optimally, the founders should be unrelated and new founders should be integrated into the captive population successively. We recommend that genetic analyses should generally precede and accompany ex situ conservation projects in order to avoid inbreeding and outbreeding depression. Furthermore, many of the published studies do not provide all the relevant parameters (founder size, captive population size, H o , H e , inbreeding coefficients). We, therefore, propose that a general standard for the presentation of genetic studies should be established, which would allow integration of the data into a global database.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ex situ conservation genetics: a review of molecular studies on the genetic consequences of captive breeding programmes for endangered animal species

2011

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Reintroductions of Common hamsters are often accompanied by high initial mortalities ; Villemey et al 2013), which may reduce the already impoverished genetic diversity of the hamsters used in reintroductions and supplementations in the Netherlands and Belgium (Robert 2009;Kuiters et al 2010;La Haye et al 2012a). The decline in genetic diversity in populations R1-R3 as observed in this study is an important warning, as the reintroductions in these areas were performed by releasing individuals from the NL breeding line only, having already a lower genetic diversity compared with other breeding lines.…”

Section: Effects Of Reintroduction On Genetic Diversitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite these disadvantages, reintroduction has become an important and frequently applied strategy for the conservation of a broad variety of mammals, ranging from small mammals (Ottewell et al 2014;McCleery et al 2014) till large carnivores (Hayward et al 2007). Unfortunately, the overall success of reintroductions is low (Fischer and Lindenmayer 2000;Tenhumberg et al 2004;Armstrong and Seddon 2008) and several authors (Robert 2009;Weeks et al 2011) have stressed the need of giving attention to the genetic adaptive potential of reintroduced populations (Carlson et al 2014;Jamieson 2015) as a low genetic adaptive potential may hamper a successful recovery of the species (Madsen et al 1999;Westemeier et al 1998;Carlson et al 2014;Whiteley et al 2015). By implementing a systematic genetic monitoring, which we define as 'quantifying temporal changes in population genetic metrics' (following Schwartz et al 2007), when starting a reintroduction project, very important information of both the genetic status of the population and population demographic parameters can be gained, while the results of such a monitoring can be used to optimize conservation actions (Schwartz et al 2007).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Genetic monitoring to evaluate reintroduction attempts of a highly endangered rodent

Haye

Reiners

Raedts³

et al. 2017

Conserv Genet

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

a systematic reintroduction scheme including consecutive supplementations made it possible to infer success of reintroduction, supplementation and following admixture of populations. An initial loss of genetic diversity could be detected in some of the reintroduced populations, but it could be shown that due to following supplementation of populations, genetic diversity and also effective population size in the wild stabilized or even increased. Multivariate (DAPC) and Bayesian inference (STRUCTURE) revealed admixture of supplemented individuals with wild-born individuals. Although population size estimates differed strongly between populations, a link between census size, breeding lines, effective population size and genetic diversity could not be proven. This study highlights that genetic monitoring is not only descriptive but also reveals detailed information on reintroduction success, admixture and population development. We recommend that genetic monitoring should be a basic element of reintroductions and should be used to optimize reintroduction attempts.Keywords Captive breeding · Common hamster · Founder effect · Admixture · Genetic variation · Effective and census population size IntroductionThe current global biodiversity crisis affects many groups of species, including a wide range of mammalian species (Di Marco et al. 2014). A global conservation strategy for mammalian species is therefore urgently needed (Rondinini et al. 2011), but the success of conservation strategies is uncertain as many factors influence the result of conservation projects (Crees et al. 2016). The ultimate strategy to prevent extinction or to increase population Abstract The ultimate strategy to prevent species extinction is captive breeding followed by reintroduction of individuals into the wild. Unfortunately, overall success of reintroductions is poor and in most cases conservation breeding is applied for species where individual numbers, population numbers and genetic diversity is strongly reduced. In addition, reintroductions inevitably result in small populations with poor genetic status. Systematic demographic and genetic monitoring is needed to optimize conservation actions. Here we show how genetic monitoring was useful and informative in a reintroduction project for the highly endangered Common hamster (Cricetus cricetus) in the Netherlands and Belgium. Using well defined breeding lines of original relict populations combined with M. J. J. La Haye and T. E. Reiners have contributed equally to this work. numbers of mammalian species is captive breeding followed by reintroduction of captive-bred individuals into the wild (IUCN 2013). However, captive breeding and reintroduction have severe disadvantages. Reintroductions can be difficult and expensive (Tenhumberg et al. 2004), and the release of captive-bred individuals is often accompanied by high initial losses of released individuals (Villemey et al. 2013;McCleery et al. 2014). Moreover, captive breeding is mostly started in species with already highly threatened popu...

show abstract

“…Reintroductions are appealing as they facilitate population restoration or augmentation of endangered or locally-extinct species without affecting the demography of other natural populations (Armstrong and Seddon, 2008;Bowkett, 2009). Under certain circumstances, however, captive-bred animals may face different types of genetic problems in captivity (see Robert, 2009), such as inbreeding depression (Ralls et al, 1988), genetic drift (Bryant and Reed, 1999), loss of genetic diversity (Neveu et al, 1998), and/or genetic adaptations to captivity that are deleterious in the wild (Frankham, 2008), possibly due to the small population size, the unnatural setting of captivity, artificial selection, or their interactions (Robert, 2009), which may limit or even prevent a particular behaviour from being learnt. While many studies have examined the viability of reintroduced animals, including whether they are capable of some movement and/or dispersal (Diefenbach et al, 2006;Ausband and Moehrenschlager, 2009), to our knowledge, no studies have explicitly determined whether reintroduced populations have retained their natural movement tendencies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Movement patterns and genetic diversity of wild and reintroduced common dormice, Muscardinus avellanarius

Naim¹,

Telfer²,

Tatman³

et al. 2014

Genet. Mol. Res.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

ABSTRACT. Movement is an important life history trait that can have an impact on local adaptation, and other evolutionary phenomena. We used a combination of nestbox survey data and genetic techniques (genotyping at 10 microsatellite loci) to quantify patterns of movement in common dormice Muscardinus avellanarius at two distinct sites in the UK: 1) Bontuchel (a natural population) and 2) Wych (captivebred individuals that were reintroduced to this site), over three consecutive years (2006)(2007)(2008). Both methods revealed a consistent pattern of sex-biased movement (movements by adult males and females) in both populations that allowed isolation-by-distance genetic structure to develop within 1 km. The similarity of data from captivebred and natural individuals indicated that ex situ programing has not significantly altered the natural movement behavior of common dormice; consequently, the two populations could be managed with the same conservation strategies. We also found that the reintroduced dormice in Wych maintained relatively high levels of genetic diversity. This first report of movement patterns in reintroduced and natural populations of M. avellanarius combining genetic and field-survey data highlights the role of genetic studies in the investigation of ecological behaviour and for conservation management.

show abstract

Captive breeding genetics and reintroduction success

Cited by 130 publications

References 49 publications

Ex situ conservation genetics: a review of molecular studies on the genetic consequences of captive breeding programmes for endangered animal species

Ex situ conservation genetics: a review of molecular studies on the genetic consequences of captive breeding programmes for endangered animal species

Genetic monitoring to evaluate reintroduction attempts of a highly endangered rodent

Movement patterns and genetic diversity of wild and reintroduced common dormice, Muscardinus avellanarius

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About