The nene, or Hawaiian goose, underwent a severe population bottleneck during the early part of this century. To increase numbers, two captive propagation programs began in Pohakuloa, Hawaii and Slimbridge, England. After initial inbreeding depressions, the programs became productive,although population reintroduced into the wild have not been self-sustaining. Several reductions in population size can result in reduced genetic variability and increased inbreeding. Molecular genetic methods such as DNA fingerprinting can be used to assess this genetic variation and can identify relatedness of individuals within populations. Results from DNA fingerprinting in captive nene indicate a low level of genetic diversity. Detailed pedigrees from the captive breeding stocks were used to calculate coancestry coefficients, and these were found to be correlated with band sharing coefficients from DNA fingerprinting analyses. Both conancestry and band sharing coefficients in captive birds will be compared to measures of reproductive success to assess levels of inbreeding depression. Similar analyses will be conducted for wild pairs of nene on the islands of Hawaii and Maui, with the hope that decreased levels of inbreeding and increased level of reproductive success exist.
