Advantages And Disadvantages Of Selective Breeding

Everyone has heard of the bulldog. There are English bulldogs, French bulldogs, and many more. What if someone were to tell you that because of selective breeding, your precious pooch may be in danger. Selective breeding is something that breeders do to get the best looking dogs. Breeders do this for show dogs and for sport dogs but in the the bulldogs case it is very dangerous. Bulldogs are now faced with a decreased lifespan, more health problems, and is leading to less of a species variety. Even though selective breeding is great to keep certain traits out of the way, in the bulldogs case, it could be disastrous.

Selective breeding sometimes known as artificial selection is a procedure where humans use animal breeding and plant breeding to selectively develop particular phenotypic traits. They do this by characteristically by choosing which animal or plant males and females will sexually reproduce and have offspring together. This form of breeding is intentional from

Humans have been manipulating genetic transfer for over 10,000 years since our hunter- gatherer ancestors began to settle in one place and started farming and planting crops. Those humans observed and chose organisms from natural selection to select and breed organisms that showed characteristics desired by them and this began the process of selective breeding. Selective breeding favours recessive alleles that do not persist in wild populations. Selective breeding is a process of increasing the frequency of rare and recessive alleles so that they appear in homozygous form. This has the effect of eliminating the alleles for wild type from the population and the process of domestication has become irreversible. The domestic species has become dependent on humans for their survival. It is from these domestic species that humans have selected and breed favourable genetic traits for their benefit, be it higher yield in plant crops, sweeter tasting fruit, and more milk from dairy cows or ease of handling stock, selective breeding continues to be used today.

Artificial selection – a breeder that selects desired traits for a species and then breeds that species to have those traits.

Many people are familiar with the words natural selection, an idea that was popularized by Darwin in the 19th century; to simply define it, natural selection is nature’s editing mechanism that results in the favoring of some individuals over others when exposed to certain environmental factors. Artificial selection parallels the process of natural selection but with an added twist: the involvement of human beings. Artificial selection is “a process in which humans consciously select for or against particular features in organisms” allowing “only organisms with the desired feature to reproduce or may provide more resources to the organisms with the desired feature” (Artificial Selection, n.d.).

The most commonly used genetic altering purpose today is seen in animals, and it produces a multitude of opportunities. Industries, such as agriculture, have already taken action with this opportunity. Cows can be made to produce more milk, higher quality beef, and higher quality milk. Sheep can be made to produce more wool, or salmon could be made to grow faster and larger than usual. In other words, one needs less cows to produce the required milk, less sheep to produce enough wool, and less salmon to get the desired meat. Additionally, to an increase in productivity, these animals will most likely have a high tolerance to a number of diseases and illnesses. This means that not only will the cattle, sheep, and salmon be more productive, but also live a longer, healthier life. Andrew B. Perzigian in, “Brief summary of Genetic engineering and animals” says that

Modern agricultural technologies goals is to obtain the highest yields and get the highest economic profit as possible

Selective breeding also could cause a decrease in biodiversity due to inbreeding. Inbreeding is the production of breeding between closely related individuals [2] and is used as it increases the chance of having favourable alleles and desirable phenotypes in the offspring. However, due to the individuals close genetic relations to one another this can cause many problems for the biodiversity of the population of dairy cows. Traits that may be disadvantageous now will be continuously chosen against during genomic selection and embryo transfer as the DNA is being scanned and checked for undesirable traits. However, this disadvantageous trait may become an advantageous trait in the future but it will be lost through the generations of selective breeding against it and are difficult to get back. As a result, this affects the evolution of the species as a whole because they develop and change to suit the desirable traits chosen which results in the undesirable traits being lost altogether.

Artificial selection could not only be good for the environment but can help people as well. From the article “Pros and Cons of Artificial Selection” they state, "Farmers who engage in artificial selection can create crops that are bigger, more plentiful, or more resilient to local pests. When more of a crop can be grown to completion on a regular basis, then this allows for more profits to be achieved.” If the farners where to cross-breed the species, it can create a new species, and could make one that hasn't been existed yet. The farmer could then sell this and make a great deal off of it. When related to a food chain, the artificial selection can live longer and grow to be more powerful. In the article they also explain, “Horses can become faster. Chickens begin laying eggs sooner or laying more eggs. Even cats or dogs can be bred through artificial selection for better companionship.” Artificial breeding will not only cause different types of breedings, but by doing so it can cause crops, animals, and even people to maybe even make there life easier. Lastly, another example of artificial breeding is that they can be used in every industry. There isn’t any plant that can’t get something out of the breeding process. If you pick animals that have the most beneficial traits, a life can be developed that is better suited to meet the needs of a changing

Selective breeding in animals and plants is still carried out by both commercial and hobby breeders/growers. Selective breeding allows you to be able to breed/grow the exact animal/plant you want, so they can serve the purpose you want them to. Selective breeding can be used to minimise the impacts and/or treat genetic disease.

Artificial selection is a technique of reproductive control by which man alters the genes of domestic or cultivated organisms. This technique is based on the inheritable characteristics of the species, increasing the frequency with which certain variations appear in the following generations; there is a directed evolution, in which human preferences determine the

Selective breeding has been used for many years to achieve the expression of desired traits in animals and plants. Similar to natural selection, humans have developed artificial selection where humans select the most desirable traits instead of the environment, this is what’s known as selective breeding. But in fact selective breeding does not select for the fittest phenotype like in natural selection it actually selects for the most desirable phenotypes which may cause harm to the individual.

An example that I am going to use is artificial selection of working dogs (Huntaways) used in the farming industry. Artificial breeding has been extremely important in ensuring that you are breeding the best dogs for the job. This means that farmers will breed their best dogs together to ensure that he has high quality working dogs. Farmers that also compete in dog trialling, breed the dogs that are best suited to the sport of dog trialling together because there is no point breeding a high quality working dog with a Labrador because you will only end up going backwards in terms of producing high quality working dogs.

1) Natural selection is when the species survival and their reproduction determine the genetic traits compared to artificial selection that is when humans can choose their traits that will show up in their future generations. Although humans intensify and inhibit organism’s genetic traits through select ancestry, nature concerns itself with characteristics that concede improvements to a species' ability to mate and survive. when Humans select organisms to breed for selective traits, some times they select members to improve their traits. But sometimes this inbreeding can cause an expression of hazardous genes.

Artificial selection and natural selection are different forms of the same practice that Charles Darwin observed. Artificial selection is when man controls the breeding for a specific trait just like genetic engineering where scientists alter and clone genes to produce a new trait in an organism. At the same time, natural selection is based on environmental conditions. Natural selection is Darwin’s famous theory stating evolutionary changes that occur through the production of variation in each generation. Organisms that are best suited to their environment