Inbreeding depression causes reduced fecundity in Golden Retrievers

Abstract

Inbreeding depression has been demonstrated to impact vital rates, productivity, and performance in many domestic species. Many in the field have demonstrated the value of genomic measures of inbreeding compared to pedigree-based estimates of inbreeding; further, standardized, high-quality phenotype data on all individuals is invaluable for longitudinal analyses of a study cohort. We compared measures of reproductive fitness in a small cohort of Golden Retrievers enrolled in the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study (GRLS) to a genomic measurement of inbreeding, FROH. We demonstrate a statistically significant negative correlation between fecundity and FROH.This work sets the stage for larger scale analyses to investigate genomic regions associated with fecundity and other measures of fitness.