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

Zoo-based captive breeding programs typically rely on accurate pedigrees to maintain long-term population genetic diversity and prevent close inbreeding. For many mixed-sex captive populations, it is difficult to assign parentage of offspring with certainty without conducting DNA-based parentage analyses. Using the demographic parameters of a North American captive population of Arabian oryx (Oryx leucoryx), 2 kinship-based breeding-pair selection strategies were modeled for their performance in handling pedigrees with varying degrees of parentage uncertainty. We also compared these strategies with 2 nonkinship-based methods. Pedigrees simulated under different management strategies were compared for their long-term ability to maintain gene diversity (GD) and avoid inbreeding. For the Arabian oryx, results indicate that recording multiple possible parents instead of removing the unknown genomic portion of the pedigree can more efficiently utilize all animals available for breeding without compromising GD and inbreeding avoidance. Both kinship-based breeding-pair selection strategies significantly outperformed the nonkinship-based strategies.