Kinship-based management strategies for captive breeding programs when pedigrees are unknown or uncertain

Area of Science:

• Conservation genetics
• Population management
• Wildlife biology

Background:

• Zoo-based captive breeding programs require accurate pedigrees for genetic diversity and inbreeding avoidance.
• Assigning parentage in mixed-sex captive populations can be challenging without DNA analysis.

Purpose of the Study:

• To model and compare kinship-based and nonkinship-based breeding-pair selection strategies for Arabian oryx (Oryx leucoryx).
• To evaluate the performance of these strategies in managing pedigrees with parentage uncertainty.
• To assess the long-term ability to maintain gene diversity (GD) and avoid inbreeding.

Main Methods:

• Simulated demographic parameters of a North American captive Arabian oryx population.
• Modeled two kinship-based and two nonkinship-based breeding-pair selection strategies.
• Compared simulated pedigrees under different management strategies for GD and inbreeding.

Main Results:

• Kinship-based strategies significantly outperformed nonkinship-based strategies.
• Recording multiple possible parents, instead of excluding unknown genomic portions, improved breeding efficiency.
• The chosen strategies effectively utilized all available animals without compromising GD and inbreeding avoidance.

Conclusions:

• For Arabian oryx, managing pedigrees by including potential parents is more effective than excluding uncertain genetic information.
• Kinship-based selection strategies are superior for maintaining genetic health in captive populations with uncertain parentage.
• These findings offer valuable insights for optimizing conservation breeding programs.