Genetic Management – Managing Genetic Diversity for Conservation Goals

In this chapter you will learn about:

• 1. Techniques for making genetic assessments of individuals and populations and how to interpret their findings

• 2. Strategies for maintaining genetic diversity in captive populations

• 3. Applications of genetic techniques and assessment in the conservation of wild populations

• 4. Building genetic considerations into conservation plans for population management and design of nature preserves

In the previous chapter, we examined the historical development and theoretical basis for the growing field of conservation genetics and its potential role in the conservation of biodiversity. Understanding such historical, conceptual, and mathematical underpinnings of genetic structures is vital to understanding what genetic analyses can do to solve conservation problems, and how the data associated with such solutions should be interpreted and understood. But conservation in the modern world can never afford to remain exclusively theoretical for long. Ouborg et al. (2006) warn us above that conservation biology cannot mature as a science without learning to apply its theories to both common and endangered species. In this chapter, we examine the specific techniques that have been developed to more precisely assess the genetic status of populations, endangered and otherwise, and the use of the data they provide to solve the problems of maintaining genetic diversity in captivity and in the wild. We begin with an examination of the procedures and techniques that have given genetic analysis its current technological power in conservation studies.