Scientists have long puzzled over the disappearance of the Neanderthals, which went extinct roughly 40,000 years ago. A lack of genetic diversity resulting from inbreeding, competition with Homo ...

Inbreeding depression is defined as reduced fitness or performance arising from increasing homozygosity of progenies due to successive inbreeding, whereas heterosis refers to the superiority of a ...

Higher levels of inbreeding in thoroughbreds result in fewer racehorses, according to new research published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. A study carried out by ...

The small size and isolation of the endangered population of Southern Resident killer whales in the Pacific Northwest have led to high levels of inbreeding. This inbreeding has contributed to their ...

Researchers have discovered a large suite of genes in the petunia plant that acts to prevent it from breeding with itself or with its close relatives, and to promote breeding with unrelated ...

Inbreeding may have been a common practice among early human ancestors, fossils show. The evidence comes from fragments of an approximately 100,000-year-old human skull unearthed at a site called ...

May 3 (UPI) --Biologists and conservation scientists have long been operating under the assumption that inbreeding should be avoided at all costs, but a new survey -- published Monday in the journal ...

A facial deformity known as "Habsburg jaw," famously noted in the Habsburg dynasty of Spanish and Austrian royals, can be attributed to inbreeding. According to a new study published in the Annals of ...

The hole in the top of this 100,000-year-old skull from China, researchers say, reflects genetic mutations that result from inbreeding. Image via PLOS ONE/Wu et. al. In 2010, the surprising discovery ...