Animal Science Abstract
Population structure, inbreeding trend and their association with hip and elbow dysplasia in dogs
K. Mäki1,A, A. F. Groen2, A.-E. Liinamo1 and M. Ojala1
AE-mail: katariina.maki@animal.helsinki.fi
1Department of Animal Science, PO Box 28, 00014 Helsinki University, Finland2Animal Breeding and Genetics Group, Wageningen University, PO Box 338, 6700 AH Wageningen, The Netherlands
Abstract
The aims of this study were to examine population structure and inbreeding trend in six dog breeds in Finland and to assess the inbreeding depression for hip and elbow dysplasia. Data consisted of 289569 dogs, of which 36924 dogs also had a record for hip and/or elbow dysplasia screening. From the early 1980s onwards, inbreeding trends were decreasing in the Golden Retriever, the Labrador Retriever, the Rough Collie and the Rottweiler, probably as a result of importations of dogs, and somewhat increasing in the Finnish Hound and the German Shepherd. When analysed per generation, observed mean inbreeding coefficients were higher than the expected ones in each breed, indicating that breeders have not actively avoided inbreeding. As a class effect, the inbreeding level was significant only for hip dysplasia in the Labrador Retriever and the German Shepherd breeds. As a regression, inbreeding level of a dog had only a minor effect on both of the dysplasias. Hip dysplasia in the Labrador Retriever appeared to be more influenced by longer term aggregation of homozygosity (long-term inbreeding) in animals than by shorter-term inbreeding. When analysed from two data sets with a minimum of five and two ancestral generations for each dog in the data, a statistically significant association between hip dysplasia and inbreeding for the Labrador Retriever could be detected only in the former data set.
Keywords: dogs, elbow dysplasia, hip dysplasia, inbreeding depression, population structure
| Search for papers on a specific subject | |
|---|---|
 |
|