From Jerome Woolpy, Earlham College
Your article reports on the damaging effect of inbreeding on declining populations of threatened species (30 October, p 16). This, however, will depend on the usual breeding habits of the particular species.
For example, timber wolves typically find mates within their home pack, and they are likely to be related. This species shows no inbreeding problems. In fact, this system of breeding probably helps to explain the rapid evolution and success of wolves. Coyotes, on the other hand, are “outbreeders”, and suffer considerable ill effects from inbreeding.
There is nothing intrinsically bad about inbreeding, it is just that creating new, “untested” homozygotes, is likely to result in ill effects.
Richmond, Indiana, US
