I'm still enjoying some family vacation time, but I have a special treat for you. Please welcome the wonderful Susan Kelley to my blog!
MVP:
Minimal Viable Population
I’m
thrilled to be here on Christine’s blog and take it over for a day.
Let’s talk some genetics science stuff.
Survivors
of the Apocalypse, my three book dystopian romance series, is set
three hundred years in the future. A virus has nearly wiped out
mankind. Inside a doomed city are thousands of people, surviving by
keeping their sterile city completely closed to the outside. But
there are people outside the doom who survived the pandemic. They’re
living rugged, frontier lives, but they have plenty of resources. The
thing they don’t have is a large population.
This
forces the frontiersman to reach out to the city, hoping to recruit
people so they can maintain a MVP, minimal viable population. What is
that number for humans? There are many examples in science of species
being brought back from extinction, some with as few as one breeding
couple. But what about humans?
There
are plenty of opinions on that, ranging from 50 couples to 10,000 or
even 50,000. The TV show Salvation
put that number at 160, which is a number sometimes quoted in the
scientific community. The population would have to careful to prevent
inbreeding. Why is inbreeding bad? After all, many of the old noble
houses in Europe, and let’s not forget the Tsars of Russian, who
married relatives for generations. And that most famous of fictional
inbreeding stories, Game of Thrones, showcases how common though not
always accepted marrying a close relative was in medieval times.
Here’s an interesting
debate on those numbers.
Now
for the bad:
Any
birth defects that are in the family line become more likely to
appear.
Genetic
issues that are recessive are more likely to come up if related
people have offspring.
Successive
generations of close inbreeding will decrease the diversity more and
increase the rate of bad mutations.
Siblings
or parents and kids (super disgusting) marrying are the worst. They
share 50% of their DNA. First cousins share 12.5% and until rather
recently, wasn’t considered that bad of a thing. Before people
became more mobile, most people were born, lived, and died within
less than a ten-mile radius. They didn’t have many options. It was
also a way to keep wealth within the family. Once people moved around
more and women had more say in their futures, first cousin marriage
started to be frowned upon. In some parts of the USA, it is against
the law though the US is the only western country that has such a
prohibition. However, there are groups of people in the world who
still practice it. Read more interesting facts
about cousins marrying.
On
the fictional series like Game of Thrones, we see the
Targaryens have many family members who suffer from some mental
issues. But what we really want to know is if Jon and Daenerys should
have children, being aunt and nephew? Most of today’s societies
would consider that an incestual relationship. But then again, it’s
in Westeros.
But
back to my series, the outsiders are smart enough to understand they
need a larger gene pool. But can the city people survive the outside
air where the virus still lurks? Can the outsider people possibly
convince the city folks that a match with a rugged frontiersman is
the best thing for mankind?
The
last book in the series, Exile’s Savage Lady, is now
available along with the first two books at all major eBook
retailers. Robin Linden was saved was saved by the outsiders when he
was exiled from the city by a corrupt government. Now he’s
determined to return to the city and bring the cure to the starving,
oppressed population. Kerry Gibbs was raised with her brothers on the
wild frontier and isn’t afraid of anything. Until he realizes she
might lose the strong, quiet big man back to the city he feels
responsible for saving. Her only choice is to sneak into the city
with Robin and make sure he doesn’t get himself killed. Robin is
willing to sacrifice himself to save those unfortunates, but Kerry is
going to do everything she can to make sure he survives. The city is
a dangerous place and neither of them may make it out alive.
Susan
Kelley has been writing for more than ten years and has nineteen
published romances. She resides in a large country home in central
Pennsylvania where she has raised six children alongside her husband
of many years. Deer, turkeys, hawks, and other wildlife cavort
outside the window of her office where she writes fulltime. Find her:
What
do you think about marrying cousins? How close is too close? How many
people would you put on a ship to populate a space colony?
