Newsgroups: rec.birds
Path: utzoo!rising
From: rising@zoo.toronto.edu (Jim Rising)
Subject: Importing parrots for genetic variability
Message-ID: <1991Jun12.131020.22423@zoo.toronto.edu>
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1991 13:10:20 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

We need some input from a geneticist here, but my understanding
was that the deleterious effects of inbreeding essentially 
disappear after 4-5 generations.  There are lots of wild populations
of animals that--doubtless as a consequence of having been bottle-
necked--have essentially no genetic variation that seem to be doing
all right, e.g. northern elephant-seal, cheetah.  One would guess 
that there is very little variation in things like the whooping
crane.  I'm not saying that genetic variation isn't "a good thing,"
but if your parrots are always sickly maybe it has something to do
with their captive situation (the food, or what have you).  This
does not strike me as an obvious a priori argument to capture wild 
birds the enhance the captive breeding populations.  At least, 
let's get some input from geneticists about how best to do this
before we jump on that bandwagon:  how many new birds are needed
to achieve the desired effect?  what is the desired effect? how do
we best breed the birds?  etc?  Weren't all present domestic hamsters
descended from a single gravid female?  Is our goal to have "healthy
and happy pets" or to preserve genetic variation in wild populations?
(I realize that there may soon be no wild populations of some of these
species.)
-- 
Name:     Jim Rising
Mail:     Dept. Zoology, Univ. Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada    M5S 1A1
UUCP:     uunet!attcan!utzoo!rising 
BITNET:   rising@zoo.utoronto.ca