Conservation genetic management is important for today’s dog breeds!

You might have seen, or at least you probably have heard, them in the forest helping the human hunter out. You might have seen them in small shapes on the farms hunting rats. And you have probably been amazed by how they put out the livestock to pasture. In the cities they seem to be everywhere, and in all shapes.

All dog breeds are unique and should therefore be conserved. The traditional approach in dog breeding is selective breeding. Selective breeding decreases genetic variation which is the foundation for adaptation. Mother Nature doesn’t do it this way. In nature the ones that are fit enough survive and have descendants. Selective breeding favors a certain kind of animal and thereby decreases the variation.

Genetic variation is the foundation of all biological diversity. Diversity is the only thing that really matters, if the environment of a wild animal (or the customer demand of buyers of domestic animals) changes, as genetic variation is necessary for adaptation. Of course, there is no goal in itself to conserve breeds, as there are, that have no use today or that are not healthy. And all breeds, regardless of original use, need to adapt mentally to the society of today.

The Convention on Biological Diversity implies that every country should conserve old breeds that make a cultural and biological contribution. Our traditional Swedish dog breeds are a cultural heritage. But why do we not make these breeds better? Why just conserve when we can improve the breeds? It all comes back to the genetic variation. Of course, we might want to change or improve some characters. But we can never afford losing the genetic variation; if we do, we have no basis for future development.

To lose a lot of genetic variation might be a short process; to get it back is almost impossible. The only way of getting new variation, without crossbreeding, is to sit and wait for the mutations. An argument against conservation of dog breeds is that small populations are unavoidably inbred. But the goal in conservation genetic management is always to increase the size of the populations as large population sizes are beneficial for genetic variation.

Without this variation, there is nothing left to adapt when things change. If we do not keep in mind that we need to conserve the variation within and between different dog breeds, we might lose the foundation for adaptation.

/Mija Jansson

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