Inbreeding depression, the reduced fitness of offspring of related individuals, is a central theme in evolutionary biology. Inbreeding effects are influenced by the genetic makeup of a population, which is driven by any history of genetic bottlenecks and genetic drift. The Chatham Island black robin represents a case of extreme inbreeding following two severe population bottlenecks. We tested whether inbreeding measured by a 20-year pedigree predicted variation in fitness among individuals, despite the high mean level of inbreeding and low genetic diversity in this species. We found that paternal and maternal inbreeding reduced fledgling survival and individual inbreeding reduced juvenile survival, indicating that inbreeding depression affects even this highly inbred population. Close inbreeding also reduced survival for fledglings with less-inbred mothers, but unexpectedly improved survival for fledglings with highly inbred mothers. This counterintuitive interaction could not be explained by various potentially confounding variables. We propose a genetic mechanism, whereby a highly inbred chick with a highly inbred parent inherits a “proven” genotype and thus experiences a fitness advantage, which could explain the interaction. The positive and negative effects we found emphasize that continuing inbreeding can have important effects on individual fitness, even in populations that are already highly inbred.

Although evidence of inbreeding depression in wild populations is well established, the impact of genetic purging in the wild remains controversial. The contrasting effects of inbreeding depression, fixation of deleterious alleles by genetic drift and the purging of deleterious alleles via natural selection mean that predicting fitness outcomes in populations subjected to prolonged bottlenecks is not straightforward. We report results from a long-term pedigree study of arguably the world's most inbred wild species of bird: the Chatham Island black robin Petroica traversi, in which conditions were ideal for purging to occur. Contrary to expectations, black robins showed a strong, negative relationship between inbreeding and juvenile survival, yielding lethal equivalents (2B) of 6.85. We also determined that the negative relationship between inbreeding and survival did not appear to be mediated by levels of ancestral inbreeding and may be attributed in part to un-purged lethal recessives. Although the black robin demographic history provided ideal conditions for genetic purging, our results show no clear evidence of purging in the major life-history trait of juvenile survival. Our results also show no evidence of fixation of deleterious alleles in juvenile survival, but do confirm that continued high levels of contemporary inbreeding in a historically inbred population could lead to additional severe inbreeding depression.