Inbreeding

If you are a Game of Thrones fan.... I hope you enjoy this. One of the most common places to see inbreeding is in plants. It results in a very narrow genotype range which is uaually caused by self fertilization when it comes to plants. Inbreeding often happens if there is only a small pool of mates to choose from or if a specific "blood line" is trying to be achieved like in the well known example of royal families. Another common situation that includes inbreeding is managed populations such as in a Zoo. However many zoo's do try to combat this by sending certain animals to another zoo to attempt to mate with a separate blood line than the orignial. While much of the focus on inbreedig is to the costs of it, there are some benefits. One benefit of inbreeding that I discussed with my group on Tuesday was that it can retain beneficiall alleles in the population. So if there is a trait that is helpful to that individual and it is something that is able to be passed down it will in turn be beneficial to its offspring, even if inbred. This is an example of how assortative mating can come into play. A desired trait is seen, and selected for and the population moves toward it regardless of how related they are. Additionally this can happen pretty quickly as the heterozygous alleles can be quickly cut out of the population (depending on the populations total size.) It is also interesting to note that in some populations, a lower density of individuals leads to a lower impact of inbreeding. Costs of inbreeding can include a loss of heterozygosity across generations which can in the end will essentially erase an allele from a population. This in term creates a high level of homozygotes which can sometimes be carrying a recessive delterious allele which can be a problem for a species. These are both reasons for why many species have developed towards disassortative mating. Disassortative mating is when individuals will choose to mate with others who are different than them. This will attempt to combat the issues mentioned earlier when it comes to inbreeding. Meme was found on https://www.memesmonkey.com/topic/inbred

Comments

  1. Kaitlyn ChappelOctober 8, 2021 at 10:49 AM

    Kate I love your meme and I love Game of Thrones. The inbreeding throughout the series was quite shocking but it showed us how the phenotypes have an easier time being passed down. Hence, the reason why certain traits are eerily similar to the parents. Thank you for this! I needed a good laugh with a great meme! You have very valid points for why inbreeding can have positive and negative side effects! I came up with similar ones in my own post. Great job!

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  2. Caroline GatschetOctober 10, 2021 at 8:13 AM

    Hey Kate,

    Ha, nice meme and very applicable. I certainly agree that much of the focus on inbreeding lies in its disadvantages as common gene pools conflict with one another. However, I like that you made the point that beneficial alleles can also become more common through assortative mating. Although in this case the beneficial homozygous gene became more common, assortative mating can also cause a deleterious allele to present itself more. Disassortative mating, as you mentioned, can counter act this force and bring heterozygosity back into the gene pool.

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  3. Andy SuOctober 15, 2021 at 7:52 PM

    Hi Kate, very nice meme. I didn't think about how assortative mating can bring desirable alleles into homozygosity through inbreeding as one of the benefits. It was a good point you and your discussion group brought up.

    ReplyDelete

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