Tenset - Breeders Assistant Pedigree Software

Breeders Assistant can highlight the repeat ancestors in a pedigree - i.e. the ancestors that appear 2 or more times within the displayed pedigree.

To set the highlighting, use the Ancestor Highlight pulldown menu (above the pedigree in the main window) and select Repeat.

This is one of several methods of ancestor highlighting supported by Breeders Assistant.

For a video demonstration of ancestor highlighting see this video

Figure: Pedigree With Repeat Ancestor Highlighting

© 1996-2024 Tenset Technologies Ltd.
"Tenset", "PedPro", "GedWiz", "Breeders Assistant" and "Pedigree Assistant" are registered trademarks of Tenset Technologies Ltd in the United Kingdom. Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. Apple, Mac and Macintosh are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.

The Extended Edition of Breeders Assistant can rank prospective matings according to various measures of gene diversity of the breeding pool and/or the prospective parents. This is one of a number of advanced population genetics tools.

For a video demonstration see this video

One way to rank potential matings is by the 'average genome uniqueness' of the parents, but several others are possible, such as changes in mean kinship (of a breeding pool) that different matings would cause.

The following screenshot shows potential matings ranked according to the average genome uniqueness of the parents, weighted according to their reproductive value.

The genome uniqueness (symbol: GU) of an individual with respect to a current population of which it is part is the probability that it contains founder alleles not present in any other single (normally) individual in that current population. Informally, if an individual is the only one carrying a particular founders genes, then you'd likely want to breed from that individual so as not to lose those genes from the population forever. So, it might be considered desirable to be able to prioritize matings involving parents with higher GU than others.

Another factor that can be helpful to take into account is the reproductive value of the parents. E.g. if there are two potential dams with the same GU, but one is older than the other, then - and ignoring any other factors - it may be desirable to give a greater priority to breeding from the older dam first, to lessen the risk that its genes are lost for good. And yet calculations based on pure GU do not take this into account.

In order to allow for such considerations to contribute to the mating selection, the software can use the reproductive value for each individual in conjunction with the ranking factors (average parental GU in this case). The reproductive value varies from 0 to 1 where 0 means the individual is entirely unreproductive and 1 means 'fully reproductive'. Thus an older individual might have a lower reproductive value.

In the following screenshot the prospective matings have been ranked according to the average GU of the parents, but weighted according to reproductive values. E.g. the first 3 results all involve parents both of which have 100% GU. But the reproductive values of the dams (in this case) differ. The matings involving dams with lower reproductive value are ranked higher.

A demonstration of this feature can be found in the 'Mate Selection, Kinship And Population Analysis' tutorial included with the product.

Figure: Prospective Matings Ranked By Gene Diversity Metrics

Setting Reproductive Values

Reproductive values can be set in 2 ways.

One way is to define default reproductive values using the Extended Edition preference settings. These defaults are set by age and sex. Which means, in practice, you need to have the date of birth recorded for each individual in the breeding pool. E.g. you might define that up to age 5 years, say, females have reproductive value 1.0, then moving to 0.5 for age 5-8 years, then 0.2 for 8 years and older. Etc.

Alternatively you can optionally assign one of the user defined fields to hold the reproductive value. If you do this, any value stored in this field in the individual's record will override the default. This allows reproductive values to be customized for certain individuals, if that's appropriate to your situation.

Note that there is an option to entirely exclude prospective matings where either parent has a reproductive value of zero (i.e, entirely unavailable for breeding). In a real world situation there is little benefit to ranking such matings because they cannot actually happen. This option was disabled when the above screenshot was produced, which is why you see dams with zero reproductive value in the ranking list. Normally you would wish to remove these.

© 1996-2024 Tenset Technologies Ltd.
"Tenset", "PedPro", "GedWiz", "Breeders Assistant" and "Pedigree Assistant" are registered trademarks of Tenset Technologies Ltd in the United Kingdom. Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. Apple, Mac and Macintosh are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.

Breeders Assistant

Editions of Breeders Assistant

Pedigree With Repeat Ancestor Highlighting

Pedigree With Tags in Details Box

Mating Certificate

Mate Selection Matrix With Inbreeding Minimization

Prospective Matings Ranked By Gene Diversity Metrics

Setting Reproductive Values

Trial Pedigree Showing Coat Color Predictions (Cat Version)