Whether inbreeding affects the demography and persistence of natural populations has
been questioned. However, new pedigree data from field populations and molecular and …

Conservation genetics is the genetics of rarity and extinction. This discipline has arisen in
response to the depletion of the biological diversity of the planet through habitat loss …

Despite its practical application in conservation biology and evolutionary theory, the cost of
inbreeding in natural populations of plants and animals remains to a large degree unknown …

Small populations lose genetic variability because of genetic drift, and inbreeding within
populations can further decrease individual variability. Lower variation depresses individual …

Understanding the consequences of inbreeding has important implications for a wide variety
of topics in population biology. Although it is often stated in the literature that the deleterious …

Stressful environmental conditions can be defined as those that lead to a sharp reduction in
fitness in populations. That is, when changed environmental conditions cause a drastic …

This book synthesizes existing knowledge of the process of domestication and how captive
breeding and management of wild and domestic animals have affected their behaviour and …

It is important to detect population bottlenecks in threatened and managed species because
bottlenecks can increase the risk of population extinction. Early detection is critical and can …

Most natural populations intermittently experience extremely stressful conditions. This book
discusses how such conditions can cause periods of intense selection, increasing both …

Individuals in some species prefer mates carrying dissimilar genes at the major
histocompatibility complex (MHC), which may function to increase the MHC or overall …