DNA fingerprinting in Speke's gazelle: a test for genetic distinctness, and the correlation between relatedness and similarity.

In the absence of pedigree information, the determination of genetic distinctness of populations can only be made by genetic methods. Using DNA fingerprinting on the North American captive herd of Speke's gazelle Gazella spekei, we were able to address two hypotheses. First, two new individuals were found to have come from a genetically distinct population (P = 0.008, permutation test), and represent potential new founders to be added to the population. Secondly, genetic similarity was not significantly correlated with relatedness under extreme inbreeding and very close relationship (coefficient of relationship range 0.304-0.717).