Playing
chicken with red junglefowl: identifying phenotypic markers of genetic
purity in Gallus gallus
I. L. Brisbin, Jr.1 and A. T. Peterson2
1Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, Drawer E, Aiken, SC,
USA
2Natural History Museum, The University of Kansas, Lawrence,
KS, USA
Abstract
We report the results of a novel experiment, in which genetically pure
male red junglefowl Gallus gallus (Richardson strain) were deliberately
crossed with domestic female chickens to create contaminated lines of
known purity, reaching as high as 93.75%. Phenotypic characters generally
used as indicators of purity
(reduced or absent female comb, male eclipse plumage, etc.) all appeared
to at least some extent in domestically contaminated progeny and moreso
in successively more pure generations of the experiment, suggesting that
such phenotypic characters may have little, if any, utility in characterizing
red junglefowl stocks as to their genetic purity.
Keywords: red junglefowl; Gallus gallus; hybridization;
genetic swamping; feral chickens
SREL Reprint #3055
Brisbin, I. L., Jr. and A. T. Peterson 2007. Playing chicken with red
junglefowl: identifying phenotypic markers of genetic purity in Gallus
gallus. Animal Conservation 10(2007): 429-435.
