Systematic literature review of studies applying genetic relatedness estimation

We conducted a systematic literature review of 2,861 articles to identify studies that estimated genetic relatedness in naturally breeding non-human animals published during the first quarter of the 21st century. First, we searched the Web of Science using keywords related to genetic markers and relatedness, filtered out irrelevant subject categories, and cleaned the dataset by removing duplicates and unsuitable records. We then used the machine-learning tool ASReview Lab to semi-automatically screen titles and abstracts, with iterative human feedback improving the classification of relevant studies. The remaining articles were manually reviewed in full text, and key information such as species, study design, genetic markers, and inferred kinship types was extracted. Finally, we applied additional exclusion criteria and categorised the final set of studies by their main research topics, resulting in a dataset of 2,087 articles.