Hungarian Grey is an indigenous cattle breed that is one of the national symbols of Hungary. However, genetic description of the Hungarian Grey cattle has not yet been conducted based on whole-genome screening. Using the GeneSeek high-density Bovine SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) 150 K BeadChip, we sampled the genome of 36 Hungarian Grey, 12 Maremmana, 13 Hungarian Fleckvieh and 5 Holstein-Friesian cattle for population studies and used data of 139 other cattle from an additional dataset created on European cattle breeds (Upadhyay et al.2017. Heredity 118, 169–176). The performance of a multidimensional scaling plot showed that Hungarian Grey clustered independently from other European cattle. The number and total length of runs of homozygosity (ROH) is similar or slightly below the value of other European cattle; FROH coefficients (proportion of the autosomal genome covered by ROH) are similar to Maremmana and Maronesa. The frequency of ROH does not show increased values as it can be noticed in Heck and Maltese. These results indicate that the Hungarian Grey cattle have been successfully maintained avoiding negative genetic effects, and reflect the uniqueness among European cattle. The identification of breed-specific loci has been aimed at differentiating Hungarian Grey (n = 136 in this case) from other cattle breeds (n = 169). Ten loci (−log10P > 5) were identified as markers capable for differentiation of Hungarian Grey. These markers are located on chromosomes 6, 14, 15, 16, 20 and 24.

The Mangalitza pig breed has suffered strong population reductions due to competition with more productive cosmopolitan breeds. In the current work, we aimed to investigate the effects of this sustained demographic recession on the genomic diversity of Mangalitza pigs. By using the Porcine Single Nucleotid Polymorphism BeadChip, we have characterized the genome-wide diversity of 350 individuals including 45 Red Mangalitza (number of samples; n=20 from Hungary and n=25 from Romania), 37 Blond Mangalitza, 26 Swallow-belly Mangalitza, 48 Blond Mangalitza × Duroc crossbreds, 5 Bazna swine, 143 pigs from the Hampshire, Duroc, Landrace, Large White and Pietrain breeds and 46 wild boars from Romania (n=18) and Hungary (n=28). Performance of a multidimensional scaling plot showed that Landrace, Large White and Pietrain pigs clustered independently from Mangalitza pigs and Romanian and Hungarian wild boars. The number and total length of ROH (runs of homozygosity), as well as FROH coefficients (proportion of the autosomal genome covered ROH) did not show major differences between Mangalitza pigs and other wild and domestic pig populations. However, Romanian and Hungarian Red Mangalitza pigs displayed an increased frequency of very long ROH (>30 Mb) when compared with other porcine breeds. These results indicate that Red Mangalitza pigs underwent recent and strong inbreeding probably as a consequence of severe reductions in census size.

Although numerous studies on vertebrates suggest that inbreeding reduces their resistance against parasites and pathogens, studies in insects have found contradictory evidence. In this study we tested the effect of 1 generation of brother–sister mating (inbreeding) on potential and realized immune responses and other life-history traits in Tenebrio molitor. We found that inbreeding reduced adult mass, pre-adult survival and increased development time, suggesting that inbreeding reduced the condition of the adults and thus potentially made them more susceptible to physiological stress. However, we found no significant effect of inbreeding on the potential immune response (encapsulation response), but inbreeding reduced the realized immune response (resistance against the entomopathogenic fungi, Beauveria bassiana). There was a significant family effect on encapsulation response, but no family effect on the resistance against the entomopathogenic fungi. Given that this latter trait showed significant inbreeding depression and that the sample size for the family-effect analysis was small it is likely that the lack of a significant family effect is due to reduced statistical power, rather than the lack of a heritable basis to the trait. Our study highlights the importance of using pathogens and parasites in immunoecological studies.

In this paper we introduce the transformed two-parameter Poisson–Dirichlet distribution on the ordered infinite simplex. Furthermore, we prove the central limit theorem related to this distribution when both the mutation rate θ and the selection rate σ become large in a specified manner. As a consequence, we find that the properly scaled homozygosities have asymptotical normal behavior. In particular, there is a certain phase transition with the limit depending on the relative strength of σ and θ.

A general exchangeable bisexual model with variable population sizes is introduced. First the forward process, i.e. the number of certain descending pairs, is studied. For the bisexual Wright-Fisher model fixation of the descendants occurs, i.e. their proportion tends to 0 or 1 almost surely.

The main part of this article deals with necessary and sufficient conditions for ultimate homozygosity, i.e. the proportion of an arbitrarily chosen allelic type tends to 0 or 1 almost surely. The results are applied to a bisexual Wright-Fisher model and to a bisexual Moran model.

Four litters produced by father-daughter matings (back crosses) resulting in 35 animals with a theoretical inbreeding coefficient of 25% were typed with 21 independent informative markers. The differences between the two founder animals were estimated, based on the marker information, and it was found that the founder boar had higher genetic potential for proportion of lean meat and lower genetic potential for groivth than the founder sow. The proportion of the genome of each offspring which was identical by descent was investigated. On the basis of these markers the realized inbreeding was found to vary between 7 and 47%. The linear decrease in weight at days 1, 26 and 136, average daily gain and proportion of lean meat regressed on the realized inbreeding were estimated to 0·6 kg, 2·4 kg, 18 kg, 95 g/day and 15 g/kg, respectively. For weight at day 88 a corresponding linear increase of 11 kg was observed. The joint effect of founder differences and realized inbreeding were as expected negative and statistically significant for all growth traits.