• Main Author: Robert K. Wayne
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Meier; Canis lupus; gray wolf
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.575.4169; http://beheco.oxfordjournals.org/content/8/4/384.full.pdf

Wolf packs generally consist of a breeding pair and their maturing of&pring that help provision and protect pack young. Because the reproductive tenure in wolves is often short, reproductively mature offspring might replace their parents, resulting in sibling or parent-offspring matings. To determine the extent of incestuous pairings, we measured relatedness based on variability in 20 microsatellite loci of mated pain, parent-offspring pairs, and siblings in two populations of gray wolves. Our 16 sampled mated pairs had values of relatedness not overlapping those of known parent-of&pring or sibling dyads, which is consistent with their being unrelated or distantly related. These results suggest that full siblings or a parent and its of&pring rarely mate and that incest avoidance is an important constraint on gray wolf behavioral ecology. Kty words: Caw hipus, gray wolves, inbreeding, incest, microsatellites. [Behav Ecol 8:384-391 (1997)] Gray wolves (Canis lupus) live in packs that generally con-tain a breeding pair and their of&pring of one or more Utters (Mech, 1970; Murie, 1944). Additionally, packs in die wild may include siblings or earlier offspring of one of the breeding pair (Mech and Nelson, 1990). Some packs may at least temporarily contain unrelated individuals (Mech, 1991; Meier et aL, 1995; Messier, 1985; Peterson et aL, 1984; 'Van Ballenberghe, 198S). Recently, a molecular genetic study