MOLECULAR-GENETIC (RAPD) ANALYSIS OF BREEDING MAGPIE GEESE

Magpie Geese (Anseranus semipalmata) typically form nesting trios cons isting of two females and one male, an uncommon breeding arrangement f or waterfowl. To study aspects of their reproductive biology, 20 repro ductively active adults representing seven reproductive groupings (bro ods) were scored fur 106 polymorphic primer-specific RAPD bands, Genet ic distances between all possible adult pairs were calculated, and the se values were analyzed using the Mantel test. In the pairwise compari son of genetic distances, those between males were significantly less than those for other adult combinations (P < 0.05). Using the same ana lytical approach, we found that females that shared a nest were more l ike one another than were females that did not share a nest (P < 0.05) . We suggest that a plausible hypothesis to account for the relative g enetic homogeneity of the male population is that males seeking to ent er the breeding population do so at their natal site. The females they recruit are more closely related to one another than are females in g eneral.