7 ms·

What about genetic diversity? Is there enough quality DNA to establish a hardy herd?

AlotOfReading 3y ago
There isn't a hard threshold of genetic diversity you need to cross to build a successful population. It's entirely possible to succeed from bottlenecks of as few as two individuals. This has been demonstrated several times with invasive species that went on to produce tens of thousands of descendants. The feral pigs of the gulf coast and Caribbean are a good example as many of their original populations were in the double or single digits. There's no true "minimum viable population size" as far as we know, just a continuum of increasing extinction risk as the effective population size decreases.
- ysavir 3y ago
  Are those fair comparable scenarios, though? Usually successful invasive species have some 1-up on the local fauna and can thrive. Can the same be said of the newly manufactured mammoths?
  - billyjmc 3y ago
    [flagged]
- nkrisc 3y ago
  > There's no true "minimum viable population size" as far as we know For most vertebrates, it’s as low as 2. For some species, it could be 1. Definitely more than 0.
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    Note that many animal species have the ability to store millions of sperm or fertilized eggs from other individuals for many years. Such a behaviour might be a way to increase genetic diversity while populations are tiny. Note that tiny populations can occur frequently when the environment has millions of barriers between tiny populations - eg. a water dwelling creature living in millions of tiny pools and unable to pass from one pool to the next until there is a major flood, which might only be once per thousand years.
foxyv 3y ago
Genetic diversity is overrated when you talk about stock animal survival. Typically it's only a problem if you can't breed enough to cull unhealthy animals. It just means that your infant mortality rate is a little higher, which can be offset by supplemented nutrition. As the population grows larger you will see an increase in diversity due to the quirks of sexual reproduction. Also, we can just keep creating new lines of individuals and mixing them into the herd. A single bull would be able to mate with a ton of cows giving you maximum bang for your DNA buck. The hardest part would be creating a healthy animal in the first place. Once you can do that, the rest is almost trivial in comparison. After that you can even do in-vitro testing of zygotes to select healthy stock. Especially considering how valuable they would be.

There isn't a hard threshold of genetic diversity you need to cross to build a successful population. It's entirely possible to succeed from bottlenecks of as few as two individuals. This has been demonstrated several times with invasive species that went on to produce tens of thousands of descendants. The feral pigs of the gulf coast and Caribbean are a good example as many of their original populations were in the double or single digits. There's no true "minimum viable population size" as far as we know, just a continuum of increasing extinction risk as the effective population size decreases.

ysavir 3y ago
Are those fair comparable scenarios, though? Usually successful invasive species have some 1-up on the local fauna and can thrive. Can the same be said of the newly manufactured mammoths?
- billyjmc 3y ago
  [flagged]
nkrisc 3y ago
> There's no true "minimum viable population size" as far as we know For most vertebrates, it’s as low as 2. For some species, it could be 1. Definitely more than 0.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  Note that many animal species have the ability to store millions of sperm or fertilized eggs from other individuals for many years. Such a behaviour might be a way to increase genetic diversity while populations are tiny. Note that tiny populations can occur frequently when the environment has millions of barriers between tiny populations - eg. a water dwelling creature living in millions of tiny pools and unable to pass from one pool to the next until there is a major flood, which might only be once per thousand years.

foxyv 3y ago

Genetic diversity is overrated when you talk about stock animal survival. Typically it's only a problem if you can't breed enough to cull unhealthy animals. It just means that your infant mortality rate is a little higher, which can be offset by supplemented nutrition. As the population grows larger you will see an increase in diversity due to the quirks of sexual reproduction. Also, we can just keep creating new lines of individuals and mixing them into the herd. A single bull would be able to mate with a ton of cows giving you maximum bang for your DNA buck. The hardest part would be creating a healthy animal in the first place. Once you can do that, the rest is almost trivial in comparison. After that you can even do in-vitro testing of zygotes to select healthy stock. Especially considering how valuable they would be.