The golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) is an endangered raptor, which is threatened mainly by illegal egg and nestling robbery. Here we describe a fluorescently labeled, multiplex PCR method using 13 microsatellite markers, which provides a powerful tool for the individual identification and parentage testing of the Golden eagle. This test should be applicable to both forensic analysis and population studies. Fifteen polymorphic loci from A. chrysaetos were crossamplified. Subsequent PCR condition optimization led to the successful co-amplification of 13 different loci in a single PCR reaction. Fifty samples from wild-living individuals and 89 samples from captive-bred individuals were examined. The results indicated that both populations have similar levels of moderate inbreeding, unsurprising in a small population. This probability of excluding a random individual in parentage analysis was 0.9912 for the wild population and 0.9932 in the captive-bred one in the case that both the individual and its mother were examined together. The probability of identity was estimated to be 3 × 10 −8 for the wild and 4 × 10 −8 for the captive-bred populations. Given the size of the Slovak golden eagle population, this test should therefore be sufficient to reliably identify individual raptors and assess parentage in both conservation studies and forensic analysis.
Genetic disease control is generally not given the importance it deserves. Information about what percentage of individuals carry a disorder-causing mutation is crucial for breeders to produce healthy offspring and maintain a healthy dog population of a particular breed. This study aims to provide information about the incidence of mutant alleles for the most frequently occurring hereditary diseases in the Australian Shepherd dog breed (AS). The samples were collected during a 10-years period (2012–2022) in the European population of the AS. Mutant alleles and incidence were calculated from all the obtained data for all the diseases, specifically: collie eye anomaly (9.71%), canine multifocal retinopathy type 1 (0.53%), hereditary cataract (11.64%), progressive rod-cone degeneration (1.58%), degenerative myelopathy (11.77%) and bob-tail/short-tail (31.74%). Our data provide more information to dog breeders to support their effort to limit the spread of hereditary diseases.
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