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Figure 1 | Biology Direct

Figure 1

From: The existence of species rests on a metastable equilibrium between inbreeding and outbreeding. An essay on the close relationship between speciation, inbreeding and recessive mutations

Figure 1

Comparing the effects of accumulation of recessive deleterious mutations in populations undergoing various degrees of inbreeding, and with a theoretical completely outbred population. Panel A: Mendelian laws predict that when a crossing occurs between two individuals heterozygous for a recessive deleterious mutation, allelic frequency for that mutation drops from 0.5 in the parents to 0.33 in the offspring. Panel B: Evaluation of the fertility as a function of mutation loads and inbreeding coefficients. The thick red curve corresponds to the fertility predicted in a completely outbred population. It was drawn with the equation F = (1- M2.10-8)10,000 (see text). The thinner curves of different colours correspond to the fertility of crosses with a certain degree of inbreeding, as indicated on the figure. Those were calculated as F = (1- I)M, where F is the predicted fertility, M the average mutation load in the population, and I the inbreeding coefficient. In natural populations, the actual fertility would be a factor of those two theoretical degrees of fertility.

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