inbreeding
the mating of closely related individuals, as cousins, sire-daughter, brother-sister, or self-fertilized plants, which tends to increase the number of individuals that are homozygous for a trait and therefore increases the appearance of recessive traits.
Origin of inbreeding
1Words Nearby inbreeding
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use inbreeding in a sentence
Vehicle collisions and inbreeding are also significant concerns.
Four wild animals that are thriving in cities | By Ryan Chelius/Outdoor Life | February 9, 2021 | Popular-ScienceAs a result, many plants and animals have evolved innovative ways to avoid inbreeding.
Mongooses, Meerkats, and Ants, Oh My! Why Some Animals Keep Mating All in the Family | Helen Thompson | December 29, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTThe family also believed that inbreeding was central to both preserving the family fortune and ensuring “purity of blood.”
Their network of super-elite inbreeding and strategic couplings had united the West in a deathly embrace.
Their excuse for the killing the giraffe was that they were worried about inbreeding.
Break out the banjos and inbreeding jokes, folks, the Appalachian lounge suit is back.
These were placed upon their estates, "Crabbet Park," to continue inbreeding as upon the desert, pure to its blood.
This is probably one of the most remarkable cases of inbreeding on record, as the breed is also one of the most remarkable.
Hints on Dairying | T. D. CurtisAll the trouble attending inbreeding, crossing or grading comes from not properly regarding this fact.
Hints on Dairying | T. D. CurtisBut crossing or grading animals having the same failing will prove just as disastrous as would inbreeding.
Hints on Dairying | T. D. CurtisThis is due either to scanty and unvaried food or to excessive inbreeding, or probably to both.
Influences of Geographic Environment | Ellen Churchill Semple
Scientific definitions for inbreeding
[ ĭn′brē′dĭng ]
The breeding or mating of related individuals within an isolated or closed group of organisms or people. Inbreeding can result in inbreeding depression. However, in agriculture and animal husbandry, the continued breeding of closely related individuals can help to preserve desirable traits in a stock.
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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