Data from: Inbreeding reduces long-term growth of Alpine ibex populations

Many studies document negative inbreeding effects on individuals, and
conservation efforts to preserve rare species routinely employ strategies
to reduce inbreeding. Despite this, there are few clear examples in nature
of inbreeding decreasing the growth rates of populations, and the extent
of population-level effects of inbreeding in the wild remains
controversial. Here we take advantage of a long-term data set of 26
reintroduced Alpine ibex (Capra ibex ibex) populations spanning nearly 100
years to show that inbreeding substantially reduced per capita population
growth rates, particularly for populations in harsher environments.
Populations with high average inbreeding (F ≈ 0.2) had population growth
rates reduced by 71% compared to populations with no inbreeding. Our
results show that inbreeding can have long-term demographic consequences
even when environmental variation is large and deleterious alleles may
have been purged during bottlenecks. Thus, efforts to guard against
inbreeding effects in populations of endangered species have not been
misplaced.