In researching a paper for your non-majors biology class you come across a web site trying to raise money for conservation biologists who are studying a population of wolves in a national park. the money raised would be used to bring new wolves into the park for breeding purposes because the population in the park is currently experiencing inbreeding depression. how can this inbreeding depression be assessed?

Possible answers are

-by a small number of heterozygotes in the population

-by a small population size

-by large numbers of homozygous dominants

-by a large number of homozygous recessives

-any of the above

The correct answer is by a large number of homozygous recessives

When frequent mating of genetically similar individuals occurs in a population, that population faces a great risk of inbreeding depression.

When there is a lot of inbreeding (mating of the individuals that are close relatives) within a population, certain alleles which are usually rare now can become very abundant.

What this means is that in a small, inbred population the recessive alleles (often carrying a risk of diseases and suboptimal traits) become more abundant.

When we analyze the genetic structure of a population and we find a lot of homozygous recessive individuals, we can safely conclude that this population is facing inbreeding depression.