The University of Sydney, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
Nat Commun. 2021 May 24;12(1):3045. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-22631-0.
Conservation breeding programs such as zoos play a major role in preventing extinction, but their sustainability may be impeded by neutral and adaptive population genetic change. These changes are difficult to detect for a single species or context, and impact global conservation efforts. We analyse pedigree data from 15 vertebrate species - over 30,000 individuals - to examine offspring survival over generations of captive breeding. Even accounting for inbreeding, we find that the impacts of increasing generations in captivity are highly variable across species, with some showing substantial increases or decreases in offspring survival over generations. We find further differences between dam and sire effects in first- versus multi-generational analysis. Crucially, our multispecies analysis reveals that responses to captivity could not be predicted from species' evolutionary (phylogenetic) relationships. Even under best-practice captive management, generational fitness changes that cannot be explained by known processes (such as inbreeding depression), are occurring.
保护繁殖计划，如动物园，在防止灭绝方面发挥着重要作用，但它们的可持续性可能会受到中性和适应性种群遗传变化的阻碍。这些变化对于单一物种或背景来说很难被察觉，并影响全球保护工作。我们分析了来自 15 种脊椎动物的谱系数据 - 超过 30000 个个体 - 以检查人工繁殖后代的生存情况。即使考虑到近交，我们也发现，在人工饲养中增加世代的影响在物种间差异很大，有些物种的后代在几代中生存能力显著增加或减少。我们还发现了第一代与多代分析中母本和父本效应之间的差异。至关重要的是，我们的多物种分析表明，对人工饲养的反应不能从物种的进化（系统发育）关系来预测。即使在最佳的人工饲养管理下，也会发生无法用已知过程（如近交衰退）来解释的世代适应性变化。
