HEREDITARY BLINDNESS IN A CAPTIVE WOLF (CANIS-LUPUS) POPULATION - FREQUENCY REDUCTION OF A DELETERIOUS ALLELE IN RELATION TO GENE CONSERVATION

Numerous cases of hereditary diseases and disorders have been reported in wild animals bred in captivity, but little attention has been paid to the particular genetic management problems that arise when such de fects occur These problems include the obstacle of eliminating the del eterious allele(s) without contemporary loss of genetic variability. I n this paper we use the statistical methods of pedigree analysis to ad dress questions regarding a previously presumed hereditary form of bli ndness observed in a captive wolf population bred for conservation pur poses in Scandinavian zoos. The most likely mode of inheritance coinci des with an autosomal recessive allele with either a full penetrance o r a reduced penetrance of 0.6 (depending on the reliability of studboo k records). Using these two models of inheritance we calculate the pro bability of carrying the blindness allele for each living animal. Anal ysis of the effect of remOving high-probability carriers on founder al lele survival and level of inbreeding demonstrates that the frequency of the deleterious allele can be significantly reduced without serious ly affecting founder allele survival or current degree of inbreeding i n the wolf population.