Simulation Suggests that Repeated Supplementations from the Wild into Captive Population Reduce but Cannot Eliminate Inbreeding

Captive population can suffer from inbreeding due to founder's effect and supplementation from the wild has been considered to increase genetic diversity and reduce inbreeding.However, a recent simulation study suggests that one-off naïve supplementation from the wild cannot increase genetic diversity; thereby, suggesting more complicated supplementation regimes.Hence, we hypothesize that that repeated supplementations can better increase genetic diversity compared to single supplementation.Our simulations show that repeated 10% supplementations results in significantly higher genetic diversity (p-value ≤ 1.48E-03) compared to one-off 10% supplementation, and increasing the supplementation ratio of repeated supplementations results in higher genetic diversity (p-value ≤ 2.35E-04) compared to repeated 10% supplementations.However, increasing repeated supplementation ratios above 100% may not further increase genetic diversity.This implies that repeated supplementations have the potential to reduce but not eliminate inbreeding.