Abstract
BackgroundA major function of the captive panda population is to preserve the genetic diversity of wild panda populations in their natural habitats. Understanding the genetic composition of the captive panda population in terms of genetic contributions from the wild panda populations provides necessary knowledge for breeding plans to preserve the genetic diversity of the wild panda populations.ResultsThe genetic contributions from different wild populations to the captive panda population were highly unbalanced, with Qionglai accounting for 52.2 % of the captive panda gene pool, followed by Minshan with 21.5 %, Qinling with 10.6 %, Liangshan with 8.2 %, and Xiaoxiangling with 3.6 %, whereas Daxiangling, which had similar population size as Xiaoxiangling, had no genetic representation in the captive population. The current breeding recommendations may increase the contribution of some small wild populations at the expense of decreasing the contributions of other small wild populations, i.e., increasing the Xiaoxiangling contribution while decreasing the contribution of Liangshan, or sharply increasing the Qinling contribution while decreasing the contributions of Xiaoxiangling and Liangshan, which were two of the three smallest wild populations and were already severely under-represented in the captive population. We developed three habitat-controlled breeding plans that could increase the genetic contributions from the smallest wild populations to 6.7–11.2 % for Xiaoxiangling, 11.5–12.3 % for Liangshan and 12.9–20.0 % for Qinling among the offspring of one breeding season while reducing the risk of hidden inbreeding due to related founders from the same habitat undetectable by pedigree data.ConclusionThe three smallest wild panda populations of Daxiangling, Xiaoxiangling and Liangshan either had no representation or were severely unrepresented in the current captive panda population. By incorporating the breeding goal of increasing the genetic contributions from the smallest wild populations into breeding plans, the severely under-represented small wild populations in the current captive panda population could be increased steadily for the near future.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12863-016-0441-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
A major function of the captive panda population is to preserve the genetic diversity of wild panda populations in their natural habitats
Without addressing the issue of the genetic contributions from different wild populations, genetic diversity of small wild populations could be lost from the captive population, and the captive breeding program would not help preserve the genetic diversity from the small wild populations that need help most
Genetic composition of the captive panda population The analysis of the genetic contributions showed that the Qionglai (QIO) wild founders had the largest genetic contribution (52.2 %) to the captive panda population, followed by Minshan (MIN) with 21.5 %, Qinling (QIN) with 10.6 %, Liangshan with 8.2 %, Xiaoxiangling (XXL) with 3.6 %, and Sichuan with 0.7 %
Summary
A major function of the captive panda population is to preserve the genetic diversity of wild panda populations in their natural habitats. As part of the effort to preserve this endangered species, ex situ conservation or captive breeding is important to increase the number of pandas outside their natural environment [1, 2]. By October 2014, the worldwide captive panda population had 397 pandas and the historical panda pedigree had 944 pandas [4] with a complex pedigree structure (Fig. 1, Additional file 1). In spite of this population growth, genetic diversity of the captive population was lower than that of the wild population, indicating that the captive population only represented part of the. Without addressing the issue of the genetic contributions from different wild populations, genetic diversity of small wild populations could be lost from the captive population, and the captive breeding program would not help preserve the genetic diversity from the small wild populations that need help most
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