IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Frankham, R.; Ralls, K. | |
| Inbreeding leads to extinction | |
| 1998 Nature (392): 441-442 | |
Do genetic problems contribute to the endangerment and extinction of wild populations? Conservation biologists initially thought that they would - and seriously so. But it is extremely difficult to demonstrate that inbreeding contributes to the extinction of wild populations. Theoretical work in the 1980s indicated that small populations in the wild suffer from increased extinction because of an unavoidable increase in matings between close relatives. Inbreeding reduces reproductive success in populations of naturally out-breeding species, both in captivity and in the wild, and it also increases extinction rates in laboratory populations of fruit flies and mice. However, in an influential paper, Lande argued that random demographic and environmental events will drive small wild populations to extinction before genetic factors come into play. |
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