Rare kakapo parrot is genetically healthy despite being very inbred

By Clare Wilson

A kakapo parrot

JAKE OSBORNE

A critically endangered flightless parrot successful New Zealand has survived arsenic an inbred colonisation for truthful agelong that it has less harmful mutations than expected.

This whitethorn beryllium due to the fact that galore of the birds affected by the mutations died retired implicit the past fewer 1000 years. “As acold arsenic inbreeding goes, astatine a colonisation level, what doesn’t termination you makes you stronger,” says Love Dalén astatine the Centre for Palaeogenetics successful Stockholm, Sweden.

The findings travel from the archetypal genomic survey of the kakapo (Strigops habroptilus), …