Abstract
Management of small and threatened populations may require detailed knowledge about the genetic status of individuals and the genetic relatedness between individuals. I show here that individual heterozygosity at a set of 29 microsatellite loci correlates closely to the degree of inbreeding in a captive grey wolf population. Microsatellite allele sharing similarly correlates closely to known relatedness between pairs of individuals. Genotyping the same markers in a small (60-70 individuals) natural population of grey wolves in Sweden, low individual heterozygosities and high values of allele sharing between some animals were found. Since inbreeding depression has been documented in a captive grey wolf population of Scandinavian origin, the results point out an additional risk for the small Swedish wild population.
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