L. Laikre et al., HEREDITARY BLINDNESS IN A CAPTIVE WOLF (CANIS-LUPUS) POPULATION - FREQUENCY REDUCTION OF A DELETERIOUS ALLELE IN RELATION TO GENE CONSERVATION, Conservation biology, 7(3), 1993, pp. 592-601
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.