Strategies to maximise the allelic diversity maintained in small conserved populations

摘要: One of the main objectives in conservation programmes is to maintain the highest levels of genetic variability, for the population to be able to face future environmental changes and to assure long-term response to selection, either natural or artificial (Oldenbroek, 1999, Barker, 2001). The classical measure of genetic diversity is the expected heterozygosity, or gene diversity (GD), but allelic diversity (AD), or the number of different alleles per locus, also has evolutionary importance. Most optimal strategies for conservation have aimed to maximise GD (e.g. Caballero and Toro 2000), but AD has received much less attention. The objective of the present study is to test the efficiency of the maintenance of allelic diversity of strategies based either on the allelic diversity itself or on the expected heterozygosity in a small population, using information from molecular markers.