Hi Peter,
I beleive the following lends support to predictions 1 & 5 of your MPG theory:
Nature 403, 616 (2000) Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
Conservation biology: 'Ghost' alleles of the Mauritius kestrel
JIM J. GROOMBRIDGE*, CARL G. JONES, MICHAEL W. BRUFORD & RICHARD A. NICHOLS
* Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London, Regents Park, London NW1 4RY, UK
Mauritius Wildlife Foundation, Black River, Mauritius
School of Biological Sciences, Queen Mary & Westfield College, London E1 4NS, UK
Present address: Cardiff School of Biosciences, Cardiff University, Cathays Park, Cardiff CF1 3TL, UK
The population of Mauritius kestrels is thought to have recovered from a single wild breeding pair in 1974, when its prospects were considered to be hopeless, to over 200 pairs today. Here we evaluate the loss of genetic variation that resulted from this bottleneck by typing 12 microsatellite DNA loci in museum skins up to 170 years old and from modern kestrels. We find that ancestral variation was remarkably high and comparable to continental kestrel species. This shows that the unexpected resilience of the population could not have been due either to benefits contributed by an undetected remnant population or to reduction of the inbreeding genetic load by a history of small population size.