Premium
The concept of effective population size loses its meaning in the context of optimal management of diversity using molecular markers
Author(s) -
Toro Miguel A.,
Villanueva Beatriz,
Fernández Jesús
Publication year - 2020
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 - 10.1111/jbg.12455
Subject(s) - genetic diversity , context (archaeology) , effective population size , meaning (existential) , population , diversity (politics) , population size , biology , evolutionary biology , demography , epistemology , sociology , paleontology , philosophy , anthropology
Effective population size is a key parameter in conservation genetics. In the management of conservation programs using pedigree information, there is a consensus that the optimal method for maximizing effective population size is to calculate the contribution of each potential parent (the number of offspring that each individual leaves to the next generation) by minimizing the global pedigree‐based coancestry between potential parents weighted by their contributions. When using molecular data, the optimal method for managing genetic diversity will remain the same but now the molecular coancestry calculated from markers will replace the pedigree‐based coancestry. However, in this situation, the concept of effective population size loses its meaning because with optimal molecular management, genetic diversity increases in early generations and therefore effective population size takes negative values. Furthermore, in the long term, the molecular effective population size does not attain an asymptotic value but it shows an unpredictable behaviour.