Temporal and Spatial Genetic Variability in White-tailed Deer
... populations from western Tennessee and could reflect limited inbreeding but was more likely due to Wahlund effects. Limited temporal variation occurred among years within a locality and indicated a stasis in terms of minimal genetic drift and harvest effects on genetic structure of the populations. Herd origin, stocking history of populations, and gene flow were probable causes of spatial heterogeneity in deer populations in western Tennessee.To investigate genetic diversity in captive Asian elephants (Elephas maximus), a total of 26 individuals from zoos in the German cities of Berlin, Hamburg, and Leipzig, and from Zürich, Switzerland, were investigated for electrophoretic variation at 44 presumptive blood protein and enzyme coding loci. The proportion of polymorphic loci (P = 4.6%) and average heterozygosity (H = 1.4%) in the specimens studied were very low. The distribution of alleles and genotypes suggested some genetic differentiation among the source populations of our elephants, most of which were wild born. Since our results are in accordance with those of a previous survey on wild populations, low genetic variation in the Asian elephant is not only associated with captive propagation. Together with differences in the incidence of alleles among populations, it is probably la...