Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Reply to comment

iwaldron's picture

Perils of Inbreeding

Thank you for your interesting comment which makes an important point. In fact, inbreeding rabbits in the way proposed would be expected to result in substantial problems. Breeding advice for rabbits often suggests various types of close inbreeding (e.g. parent/offspring, which is called "linebreeding"); however, this advice emphasizes the importance of culling any offspring which have inherited defects.

It is interesting that the huge population of rabbits in Australia is believed to be descendents of an initial group of 24 wild rabbits. This suggests that this small population had sufficient genetic variability to produce a very healthy population, although there may well have been additional introductions of rabbits since 1859. Also, of course, natural selection accomplished the recommended culling.

Your comment and these observations suggest another point that would be useful to include in the discussion of the last question in the section on Exponential Population Growth about unrealistic assumptions in the hypothesized rabbit population example.

Reply

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
7 + 10 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.