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A genetic description of two selected strains of rabbits
Author(s) -
KERDILES V.,
DE ROCHAMBEAU H.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
journal of animal breeding and genetics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.689
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1439-0388
pISSN - 0931-2668
DOI - 10.1046/j.1439-0388.2002.00315.x
Subject(s) - inbreeding , strain (injury) , biology , litter , genetics , mating , herd , zoology , veterinary medicine , ecology , anatomy , demography , population , medicine , sociology
Two strains of rabbits (strains 1077 and 2066) have been selected since 1974 for increased litter size. Each strain is split into a fixed number of reproduction groups. The mating scheme is similar to random non‐sib herd mating. The number of animals per generation is higher in strain 1077 (28 mated bucks and 104 mated does) than in strain 2066 (17 and 59, respectively). The increase of the inbreeding coefficient is higher in strain 2066 than in strain 1077 (27 and 21%, respectively, at generation 20). The mean standard deviation of the individual inbreeding coefficients per generation is low (less than 4%) in both strains. Short‐term inbreeding is stable over generations. The observed inbreeding effective size Ne f and the observed familial structure effective size Ne h converge to the same value. The number of founder genomes still present in the genetic pool of the generation decreases regularly: from 5.6 to 2.4 between G6 and G20 for strain 1077. It is a bit lower over time for strain 2066 (from 5.7 to 1.9 between G6 and G20). The effective number of founders is nearly twice as small as the total number: 30 for strain 1077 and 15 for strain 2066. The effective number of major ancestors decreases slightly in strain 1077 (13.6 in G6 and 12.9 in G20) and regularly in strain 2066 (13.8 in G6 and 9.4 in G20).