Inbreeding depression by environment interactions in a free-living mammal population

A study on the Soay sheep population of St Kilda reveals limited evidence for interactions between inbreeding depression and environmental harshness, challenging the assumption that such effects are stronger in wild populations. While all nine traits analyzed showed variation with population density and some evidence of inbreeding depression due to individual or maternal inbreeding, only two interactions were statistically significant. The research used genomic inbreeding coefficients based on 37,037 SNP loci and population density as an environmental axis, suggesting that wild populations may not always exhibit strong inbreeding-by-environment interactions due to lower observed inbreeding levels, potential overestimation of stress in experimental studies, or natural purging of deleterious alleles.

Pemberton, J. M., Ellis, P. E., Pilkington, J. G., & Bérénos, C. (2016). Inbreeding depression by environment interactions in a free-living mammal population. Heredity, 118(1), 64–77. https://doi.org/10.1038/hdy.2016.100