A bird's eye view of a deleterious recessive allele.
In the endangered Scottish chough (Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax) population, a lethal blindness syndrome is found to be caused by a deleterious recessive allele. Photo: Gordon Yates. In Focus: Trask, A.E., Bignal, E.M., McCracken, D.I., Monaghan, P., Piertney, S.B. & Reid, J.M. (2016) Evidence of the phenotypic expression of a lethal recessive allele under inbreeding in a wild population of conservation concern. Journal of Animal Ecology, 85, 879-891. In this issue of Journal of Animal Ecology, Trask et al. () report on a strange, lethal, blindness that regularly affects chicks of an endangered bird population. The authors show that the inheritance mode of this blindness disease precisely matches the expectations of a recessive deleterious mutation. Intriguingly, there is also an indication that the disease-causing variant might be maintained in the population by balancing selection, due to a selective advantage for heterozygotes. Could this finding have consequences for conservation actions implemented for the population?
Department of Ecology and Genetics, Uppsala University, SE-75236, Uppsala, Sweden.
Robert
R
Ekblom
D000818:Animals; D001766:Blindness / Q000235:genetics*; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D003318:Corneal Opacity / Q000235:genetics; D056727:Endangered Species; D005804:Genes, Lethal; D046109:Passeriformes / Q000235:genetics*; D012606:Scotland; D012641:Selection, Genetic