CLARIFICATION OF GENETIC TERMS AND THEIR USE IN THE MANAGEMENT OF CAPTIVE POPULATIONS

Some of the concepts, terms, and methods used in the genetic managemen t of captive populations have not been defined precisely in the scient ific literature and consequently have been misunderstood and misused. The definitions and interrelationships among gene diversity, effective population size, founder genome equivalents, inbreeding, allelic dive rsity, mean kinship, and kinship value are presented here. It is impor tant to understand what populations and generations are used as the ba selines against which losses of genetic variation are measured. Gene d iversity and founder genome equivalents are defined relative to a sour ce population from which founders of the captive population were rando mly sampled. Inbreeding and allelic diversity are assessed relative to the founders. The potential gene diversity that would result from an equalization of frequencies of founder alleles retained in the populat ion can never be achieved because, among other limitations, the random process of gene transmission will prevent equalization of allele freq uencies even if animals are bred optimally. The gene diversity achieva ble with the population can be determined by iterative production of h ypothetical offspring from the pairs with lowest mean kinship. The lon g-term objective for offspring production from each animal is also the reby generated. Mean kinships should be recalculated with each real or hypothetical birth and death, because offspring objectives based on c urrent mean kinships might correlate poorly with the optimal long-term offspring objectives. (C) 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.