Application of DNA fingerprinting to the recovery program of the endangered Puerto Rican parrot.

Abstract

The Puerto Rican parrot was reduced to -13 animals in 1975 and as a conservation measure, a captive population was established from a few founders taken from the wild between 1973 and 1983. The number of successful breeding pairs in captivity has been low, and the captive breeding program has not been as productive as that of the closely related Hispaniolan parrot. Therefore, a genetic study was initiated to examine the relative levels of relatedness of the captive founders using levels of bandsharing in DNA ringerprints. Unrelated captive founder Puerto Rican parrots had the same average level of bandsharing (0.41) as second-degree relatives of the Hispaniolan parrot (0.38, P > 0.05), with an inbreeding coefficient of 0.04. High levels of bandsharing (>40%) between pairs of males and females correlated with reproductive failure, suggesting that inbreeding depression is partly responsible for the low number of breeding pairs. Consequently, DNA profiling can be used to guide the captive breeding program for the Puerto Rican parrot, and other endangered species, by identifying pairs of males and females with low levels of bandsharing.

Allee effect, sexual selection and demographic stochasticity

“…Many examples of this phenomenon have been reported in the literature (e.g. Brock and White 1992, Cox et al 1993, Wilson et al 1994, Kummer 1995.…”

“…For example, Puerto Rican parrots, Amazona 6ittata (Brock and White 1992, Anonymous 1994, Wilson et al 1994, and California condors, Gymnogyps californianus (Cox et al 1993), reproduce at a higher rate when given free choice of a mate. Similarly, in the threatened Mauritius kestrel, Falco punctatus, eggs collected from free-breeding pairs had higher hatchability than eggs collected from pairs breeding in captivity (Jones et al 1991).…”

A Draft Sequence of the Puerto Rican Parrot Genome (Amazona vittata) – a Genome Project funded by a Local Community Effort

“…In addition to the genetic models identified by computer algorithms, genes and other genetic elements of the parrot's genome will be identified by comparing its sequence to existing genome sequences of other birds such as the zebra finch, parakeet, turkey and the chicken, as well as reptiles (the anole lizard (Anolis carolinensis)). Finally, cDNA library construction and sequencing of genes expressed in various tissues of related, but not critically endangered species of parrots, such as Hispaniolan parrot (Amazona hispaniola), are proposed to generate models for all genes, since this species is known to be genetically very related 6,13 .…”

“…Newly sequenced genomes will be aligned to the reference genome to discover and describe genetic variation across the chromosomes. Initially, it is important to identify genome regions most affected by the population bottleneck, since currently most of the efforts to identify individual birds using microsatellite markers have failed because the birds are almost completely identical 6 . Resequencing of the population diversity sample would allow us to identify those places of the genome, where the individual variation still remains, as inbreeding depression has been suggested as one of the causes of the slow population recovery 6,15 .…”

“…It is also highly invariable due to the recent population bottleneck 6 . These two aspects made Puerto Rican parrot an ideal candidate for the genome sequencing and assembly: the small genome size allows high sequencing coverage, while the low amount of genetic variation permits accurate alignments between the sequenced fragments resulting in fewer assembly errors.…”