Inbreeding depression is reduced
fitness in a given
population as a result of breeding of related individuals. Breeding between closely related individuals, called
inbreeding, results in more
recessive deleterious traits manifesting themselves. The more closely related the breeding pair is, the more
homozygous deleterious
genes the offspring may have, resulting in very unfit individuals. Another mechanism responsible is
overdominance of heterozygous alleles leading to a reduction in the fitness of a population with many homozygous alleles, even if they are not deleterious. Currently it is not known which of the two mechanisms is more important. In general, populations with more genetic variation do not suffer from
inbreeding depression. Inbreeding depression is often the result of a
population bottleneck. The phenomenon of inbreeding depression may occur in either
plant or
animal species.
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Reduction in offspring fitness resulting from mating between blood relatives.