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Keeping the Race Pure

By evolgen on January 9, 2007.

Imagine you have two races -- because calling them populations is just too damn PC -- that are fixed for different alleles. Additionally, at loci were there are no fixed differences, alleles are segregating at different frequencies between the two races. In order to keep each of the races pure we must prevent any interbreeding (hybridization) between the two races.

Why the hell would we want to keep the races pure? For conservation reasons, of course. You didn't think I was talking about human races, did you? Because I wasn't. Seriously.

The NYTimes is running an article on efforts to conserve the genetic uniqueness of the American Bison (don't call them buffalo). You see, the bison can mate with domesticated cattle, which introduces cattle alleles into the bison population. Conservationists want to keep the bison blood pure, so they're genotypic bison to see the level of introgression from the cattle genome.

John Hawks has a much more intelligent take.

Tags
Population Genetics

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There's always been conflict between the type of conservationist who wants things to "stay the same" forever and those who see their task as "allowing nature to take its course". For example, in forestry there's types who want all forest fires to be prevented and types that see (limited) forest fires as part of the natural cycle. Preventing populations from breeding seems to be much the same thing as preventing forest fires.

There is a difference in biology between the term "race" and "population" and I'm not sure what is wrong with being PC when it comes to an issue that causes untold suffering. (Why not stick with your earlier idea of using the correct term?). Sorry, I'm going off a bit. I'll be back with more on that later but I'll keep it on my own blog...

Anyway, I had been thinking about this bison issue in relation to a different issue in Africa: The White Rhino. There are two famous populations, "southern" which was probably also eastern, and the Congo subspecies (i.e., race).

The former numbers in the zillions up from just a couple of thousand (or less) and the latter probably numbers in the dozens right now.

This would probably be a good case of simply intermixing them as soon as possible, so that the too-few-to-survive Congo Rhinos get some additional numbers (by inviging some of the Southern rhinos over for a romantic dinner then not letting them leave, of course) and I would imagine, by adding what must be some important genetic variation from the Congo population into the Southern.

I'm not too sure how worried I am about a few Old World cattle genes sneaking into the bison...

Greg, the PC line was a joke. Sorry if it was unclear.

The issue of preserving genetically unique population at the expense of possibly losing the population to extinction is a big deal in conservation. I'm not sure if there is a right answer.