Captive Ancestry Upwardly Biases Estimates of Relative Reproductive Success

The Journal of Heredity
Janna R Willoughby, Mark R Christie

Abstract

Supplementation programs, which release captive-born individuals into the wild, are commonly used to demographically bolster declining populations. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of these programs, the reproductive success of captive-born individuals released into the wild is often compared to the reproductive success of wild-born individuals in the recipient population (relative reproductive success, RRS). However, if there are heritable reductions in fitness associated with captive breeding, gene flow from captive-born individuals into the wild population can reduce the fitness of the wild population. Here, we show that when captive ancestry in the wild population reduces mean population fitness, estimates of RRS are upwardly biased, meaning that the relative fitness of captive-born individuals is over-estimated. Furthermore, the magnitude of this bias increases with the length of time that a supplementation program has been releasing captive-born individuals. This phenomenon has long-term conservation impacts since management decisions regarding the design of a supplementation program and the number of individuals to release can be based, at least in part, on RRS estimates. Therefore, we urge caution in the interpret...Continue Reading

Associated Datasets

References

Nov 1, 1985·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·R Lande
Jan 26, 2007·Nature·Frank J PoelwijkSander J Tans
Feb 15, 2007·Conservation Biology : the Journal of the Society for Conservation Biology·Hitoshi ArakiMichael S Blouin
Oct 30, 2010·Genetic Epidemiology·Hua TangStephanie J London
Dec 4, 2014·Evolutionary Applications·Mark R ChristieMichael S Blouin
May 1, 2008·Evolutionary Applications·Hitoshi ArakiMichael S Blouin
May 6, 2015·Investigative Genetics·Andreas Wollstein, Oscar Lao
Jul 1, 2015·Trends in Ecology & Evolution·Winsor H LoweFred W Allendorf
Feb 18, 2016·Nature Communications·Mark R ChristieMichael S Blouin

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Citations

Sep 1, 2018·Conservation Biology : the Journal of the Society for Conservation Biology·Janna R Willoughby, Mark R Christie
Aug 26, 2021·Evolutionary Applications·Ilana J Koch, Shawn R Narum

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