Pedigree analysis for MINKO'S CROSS

The Inbreeding Coefficient (IC) or Coefficient of Inbreeding (COI) or Coefficient of Kinship of an individual is defined as the probability that the two genes this individual has in a locus are identical by descent, i.e., they are both inherited from a common ancestor.

The calculation of the inbreeding coefficient is done up to a given pedigree depth (number of generations): the greater the depth of the pedigree, the greater the chance of finding new common ancestors, and the higher the inbreeding coefficient.

It only makes sense to compare the inbreeding coefficients of different pedigrees if the number of generations used for the calculation is the same and the pedigrees are complete for the generations!

The maximum number of possible ancestors in a pedigree is 2^(number of generations+1)-2. The ancestor loss is calculated by comparing the number of possible ancestors in a pedigree with the actual number of different ancestors.

e.g. a four-generation pedigree contains 30 animals and if a particular pedigree consists of 30 unique animals then this pedigree has no ancestor loss at all; but in a pedigree with some inbreeding there might only be 26 unique animals in these four generations, meaning an ancestor loss of 13.3%.