Efficiency of the inbreeding coefficient f and other estimators in detecting null alleles, as revealed by empirical data of locus oke3 across 65 populations of chum salmon Oncorhynchus keta.

A survey of 65 populations of chum salmon Oncorhynchus keta across the species range revealed homozygote excess (947 homozygotes in 2954 fish) at a polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based simple sequence repeat (SSR) locus oke3 with multiple alleles, whereas re-designed PCR primers indicated that 328 of these homozygotes were actually heterozygotes. Statistically significant high positive values of inbreeding coefficients, f, in multiple populations appeared to be a reliable predictor of null alleles. Based on these data, three methods were checked for their ability to estimate null-allele frequencies.