:?

🏵️ Ceramic hummingbird hawk-moth sculpture 🏵️

A large dataset (227 breeds; dataset 1) of median heterozygosity values (H) was obtained through commercial DNA testing of 49,378 dogs. The mean number of individuals per breed was 217.5 (95% Confidence Interval 162–273.1) and the range of individual dogs/breed was 30–4728. Since the H values do not provide a simple relationship to pedigree, we wanted to determine what their equivalency was to the coefficient of inbreeding (F). The genotype-based coefficient of inbreeding was determined in 19 breeds with 8–20 individuals in each breed (dataset 2) for comparison to dataset 1. Dreger at al [8] used 10 individuals per breed and calculated F based on genotypes and the correlation with dataset 2 was 0.85 (12 breeds in common). Yordy et al. [9] used 6–724 individuals per breed and the correlation with dataset 2 was 0.75 (15 breeds in common). F from dataset 2 was highly correlated with H from dataset 1 (Pearson correlation coefficient of − 0.8899 (P < 0.0001) for the same 19 breeds. Linear regression (r2 = 0.79) was performed to obtain adjusted F values (Fadj) for the dataset 1 breeds. Based upon linear regression, an H value of 33.1% was equivalent to F of 0.25. The H values were adjusted based on the regression to provide breed estimates of inbreeding for the 227 breeds in dataset 1 (Fadj). These adjusted values from dataset 1 were compared to adjusted values from [9] which included 97 breeds in common and the Pearson correlation was 0.883 and [8] which included 75 breeds in common and was 0.89. The mean of the Fadj values for 227 breeds was 0.249 (95% CI 0.235–0.263) (Fig. 1). Strikingly few breeds (N = 12) had low inbreeding values (< 0.10). The breeds with the lowest levels of inbreeding were mostly landrace breeds or breeds with recent cross breeding. To put the inbreeding values in context, the breeding of two first cousins produces F = 0.0625, two half siblings F = 0.125 and two full siblings or parent-offspring F = 0.25.

Wood engravings by Colin See-Paynton. ~ "Loons" ~ "Puffins" ~ "Tiding of Magpies"

Artist from Berriew, Powys, Wales. Born 1946.