Molecular Genetic Approaches in Wildlife Conservation

Abstract

Wildlife conservation is of major biological importance due to the survivability of organisms in an ecosystem and population stability. The primary concern of the management and genetics of populations is inbreeding. The small population size can play a diminishing role in genetic variability and increasing inbreeding in animal populations. Inbreeding depression can be due to major factors such as rare, deleterious, recessive alleles which can be repressed under heterozygous conditions. The decreasing effect in heterozygosity can be significant upon severe bottleneck effect. The genetic variations between populations could be assessed using molecular techniques. Mitochondrial DNA variations for determining the founder’s effect can be widely applicable in the management of wild populations. The maternal lineages in a captive population can signify the variations in the population as well as the number of males contributing to the gene pool of the various population. Molecular markers can be used to differentiate between populations and identify the individuals contributing to the gene pool of the species.