Interactive Use of nprcgenekeepr

An R Package for the Genetic Management of Colonies

Introduction

This tutorial demonstrates the major functions used within the Shiny application provided by the nprcgenekeepr package and provides sufficient insight into those functions that they may be used independently.

This tutorial is primarily directed toward someone with experience using R who wants to better understand how the Shiny application works or to perform some actions not directly supported by the Shiny application.

Please provide any comments, questions, or bug reports through the GitHub issue tracker at https://github.com/rmsharp/nprcgenekeepr/issues.

Installation and Help

You can install nprcgenekeepr from CRAN with the following code.

install.packages("nprcgenekeepr")
## Use the following code to get the development version from GitHub
# install.packages("devtools")
# devtools::install_github("rmsharp/nprcgenekeepr")

All missing dependencies should be automatically installed.

You can get help from the R console with

?nprcgenekeepr

Reading in a Pedigree

A pedigrees can be imported using either Excel worksheets or text files that contain all of the pedigree information or using either Excel worksheets or text files that contain a list of focal animals with the remainder of the pedigree information is pulled in through the LabKey API.

This tutorial will use a pedigree file that can be created using the makeExamplePedigreeFile function as shown below. The function makeExamplePedigreeFile both saves a file and returns the full path name to the saved file, which we are saving into the variable pedigreeFile. Note: by default the file is written to the session’s temporary directory (tempdir()); pass the file argument to choose a different location.

library(nprcgenekeepr)
pedigreeFile <- makeExamplePedigreeFile()

This writes examplePedigree.csv to the session’s temporary directory unless you supply a file argument.

You use the file name provided by the makeExamplePedigreeFile function to tell read.table what file to read.

breederPedCsv <- read.table(pedigreeFile,
  sep = ",", header = TRUE,
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)

breederPedCsv$fromCenter <- "TRUE"
breederPedCsv$fromCenter[
  suppressWarnings(sample(
    which(is.na(breederPedCsv$sire) &
      is.na(breederPedCsv$dam)),
    round(0.8 * length(which(
      is.na(breederPedCsv$sire) &
        is.na(breederPedCsv$dam)
    )))
  ))
] <- "FALSE"

Note the number of rows read. Each row represents an individual within the pedigree.

nrow(breederPedCsv)
## [1] 3694

The next step is to put the information read from the file into a pedigree object. This is done with the qcStudbook function, which examines the file contents and tests for common pedigree errors.

You can see the errors that can be detected by qcStudbook by returning the empty error list with getEmptyErrorLst(). We are not showing the output of the function call now because later in this tutorial we will explore errors in more depth.

qcStudbook can take five arguments sb, minSireAge and minDamAge (in years), reportChanges, and reportErrors. However, all but sb have default values and only the sb argument is required.

It is prudent to ensure that parents are at least of breeding age, which is species and sex specific. Leaving minSireAge and minDamAge blank (their default, NULL) looks up the species-specific breeding age for each sex; a number overrides that sex’s floor. I have set both to 2 years here.1

breederPed <- qcStudbook(breederPedCsv, minSireAge = 2L, minDamAge = 2L)

If qcStudbook reports an error, change the call by adding the reportErrors argument set to TRUE and examine the returned object. More on this is presented in the Pedigree Errors section.

Identifying Focal Animals

You may want to focus your work on a focal group of animals. This can be done by reading in a list of animal IDs that make up the focal group and use that list to update the pedigree. Alternatively you can created a list of animal IDs based on criteria you have selected.

For example, to select living animals at the facility with at least one parent, the following can be used.

focalAnimals <- breederPed$id[!(is.na(breederPed$sire) &
  is.na(breederPed$dam)) &
  is.na(breederPed$exit)]
print(stri_c(
  "There are ", length(focalAnimals),
  " animals in the vector _focalAnimals_."
))

[1] “There are 327 animals in the vector focalAnimals.”

As can be seen, these animals have at least one parent and have not left the facility.

breederPed[breederPed$id %in%
  focalAnimals, c("id", "sire", "dam", "exit")][1L:10L, ]
id sire dam exit
1669 01QRQ4 VDBGDP TH7HTY NA
1743 CLSVU6 ULV9M7 SUFWJI NA
1887 1SPLS8 U9APLW 142GKP NA
1934 5IAFMK U4YSS5 WVE6Y4 NA
2072 HLQ9SY UI3RFL VEWC1E NA
2234 XFWVVX U3MFSZ L4LM1F NA
2337 6X6BG9 ENI6HX IUF0HC NA
2377 B228Q6 UEUIRJ CBSIAA NA
2378 B2CKHA ENI6HX WBFBR5 NA
2383 BCJJKN UA379T JPVAT3 NA

We indicate that these are the animals of interest by using the setPopulation function. This function simply sets a column named population2 to the logical value of TRUE if the row represents an animal in the list and FALSE otherwise.

The first line of code below sets the population column and the second counts the number of rows where the value was set to TRUE.

breederPed <- setPopulation(ped = breederPed, ids = focalAnimals)
nrow(breederPed[breederPed$population, ])
## [1] 327

The IDs used to populate the population flag can be used to trim the pedigree so that it contains only those individuals who are in the ID list or are ancestors of those individuals.

trimmedPed <- trimPedigree(focalAnimals, breederPed)
nrow(breederPed)
## [1] 3694
nrow(trimmedPed)
## [1] 704

The trimPedigree function has the ability to remove those ancestors that do not contribute genetic information. Uninformative founders are those individuals who are parents of only one individual and who have no parental information. (Currently genotypic information is ignored by trimPedigree).

trimmedPedInformative <- trimPedigree(focalAnimals, breederPed,
  removeUninformative = TRUE
)
nrow(trimmedPedInformative)
## [1] 509

We can find all of the animals that are in the trimmed pedigree but are not focal animals.

nonfocalInTrimmedPed <- trimmedPed$id[!trimmedPed$id %in% focalAnimals]
length(nonfocalInTrimmedPed)
## [1] 377

We can see which of these 377 are and are not parents. We will first make sure we have all of the parents by getting our list of parents from the entire pedigree. We then demonstrate that they are all in the trimmed pedigree.

allFocalParents <- c(
  breederPed$sire[breederPed$id %in% focalAnimals],
  breederPed$dam[breederPed$id %in% focalAnimals]
)
trimmedFocalParents <- c(
  trimmedPed$sire[trimmedPed$id %in% focalAnimals],
  trimmedPed$dam[trimmedPed$id %in% focalAnimals]
)
all.equal(allFocalParents, trimmedFocalParents) # Are the IDs the same?
## [1] TRUE

However, not all of the animals in the trimmed pedigree are either the focal animals or their parents. They are more distant ancestors as we will show.

notFocalNotParent <-
  trimmedPed$id[!trimmedPed$id %in% c(focalAnimals, allFocalParents)]
length(notFocalNotParent)
## [1] 187

Since the trimming process is supposed to retain the focal animals and their ancestors, we will leave it as an exercise for you to demonstrate that at least some of the remaining animals are grandparents of the focal animals. Hint: there are 490 grandparents of the focal animals in the trimmed pedigree.

As you can see from the number of rows in the full pedigree (3694) versus the trimmed pedigree (704), trimmed pedigrees can be much smaller. Of the additional 377 animals, 182 provide genetic information while the others (195) are genetically uninformative.

As is shown below only 4 (0ZX29Q, 1QBKW9, 5PWJ0G, and Y3CJ5A) living animals are still in the colony but are not in the trimmed pedigree.3

unknownBirth <- breederPed$id[is.na(breederPed$birth)]
knownExit <- breederPed$id[!is.na(breederPed$exit)]
unknownBirthKnownExit <-
  breederPed$id[is.na(breederPed$birth) | !is.na(breederPed$exit)]
knownPed <- breederPed[!breederPed$id %in% unknownBirthKnownExit, ]
otherIds <- knownPed$id[!knownPed$id %in% trimmedPed$id[is.na(trimmedPed$exit)]]
print(stri_c(
  "The living animals in the pedigree that are not in the trimmed ",
  "pedigree are ", get_and_or_list(otherIds), "."
))

[1] “The living animals in the pedigree that are not in the trimmed pedigree are 0ZX29Q, 1QBKW9, 5PWJ0G, and Y3CJ5A.”

Age Sex Pyramid Plot

You can examine the population structure using an age-sex pyramid plot with a single function. We will limit our view to just the focal animals and their living relatives. This is appropriate for colony management because in addition to the genetic diversity we seek, we have to remain cognizant of the age and sex distributions within the colonies we manage.

getPyramidPlot(ped = trimmedPed[is.na(trimmedPed$exit), ])

Age Sex Pyramid Plot.

## 45 45
## [1] 5.1 4.1 4.1 2.1

Pedigree Diagram

The Pedigree Browser’s Diagram tab in the Shiny application renders a pedigree as a family-tree diagram. A mate’s own mating(s) render as a small connector between the two parents, with a line down to their shared children, rather than two independent lines running straight from each parent – the same convention traditional pedigree charts use. An animal that mates more than once, or whose lineage loops back on itself (e.g. a consanguineous mating), appears once per mating, with each occurrence after the first joined back to its main occurrence by a dashed line. Both are built on two script-callable functions that work identically outside the Shiny application: makePedigreeMatingLayout prepares a pedigree’s node/edge data in this convention, and drawPedigreeDiagram draws it with the visNetwork package (a dependency of nprcgenekeepr); the Diagram tab itself calls drawPedigreeDiagram. (A simpler function, makePedigreeDiagramData, remains available for a plain one-node-per-animal diagram without this convention – it is no longer what the Shiny app itself uses.) See the pedigree-diagram article for the equivalent point-and-click workflow and screenshots of every feature – including affected-status shading, name labels, and twin/zygosity connectors, none of which this scripted walkthrough demonstrates.

That parent-to-mating-to-child connector has two available routings, selected by makePedigreeMatingLayout’s edgeStyle argument: "rectilinear" (the default, Track 2, docs/planning/pedigree-diagram- kinship2-fidelity-remediation-plan.md – strict horizontal/vertical right angles throughout: a horizontal segment between the two parents, a vertical drop to the mating dot, a horizontal sibship bar across the children, and a vertical drop into each one, matching the convention the kinship2 R package uses) and "direct" (a single straight or lightly sloped line all the way from parent to mating dot to child). The Shiny app’s Diagram tab exposes the same choice live as a “Diagram Edge Style” toggle above the diagram; in a script it is just this one argument. Both are demonstrated below – direct first, rectilinear (matching the tab’s own default) afterward.

The trimmedPed pedigree built earlier in this tutorial has 704 animals – realistic for the live Shiny application’s pan-and-zoom canvas, but too dense for a single static demonstration to usefully show every feature at once. It is also limited to the Female, Male, and Unknown sex codes that happen to occur in the bundled example data – the Hermaphrodite and unrecorded-sex shapes never appear in it. So instead we build a small, synthesized pedigree spanning a few generations, deliberately including all five sex codes makePedigreeMatingLayout recognizes – and, since two of its founders (M1 and F2) each mate more than once, the diagram’s duplicate-node convention as well.4

founders <- data.frame(
  id = c(paste0("F", 1L:4L), paste0("M", 1L:4L)),
  sire = NA_character_, dam = NA_character_,
  sex = c(rep("F", 4L), rep("M", 4L)),
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)
gen1 <- data.frame(
  id = paste0("C", 1L:12L),
  sire = c(
    "M1", "M1", "M1", "M2", "M2", "M3", "M3", "M3", "M4", "M4", "M1", "M1"
  ),
  dam = c(
    "F1", "F1", "F1", "F2", "F2", "F3", "F3", "F3", "F4", "F4", "F2", "F2"
  ),
  sex = c("F", "M", "H", "F", "M", "M", "F", "U", "F", "M", "F", "M"),
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)
gen2 <- data.frame(
  id = paste0("D", 1L:9L),
  sire = c("C2", "C2", "C5", "C5", "C5", "C6", "C10", "C10", "C12"),
  dam = c("C4", "C4", "C7", "C7", "C7", "C1", "C9", "C9", "C11"),
  sex = c("F", "M", "M", "F", "M", "F", "M", "F", "F"),
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)
gen3 <- data.frame(
  id = paste0("E", 1L:4L),
  sire = c("D2", "D2", "D5", "D7"),
  dam = c("D4", "D4", "D8", "D6"),
  sex = c("F", "M", "U", NA_character_),
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)
demoPed <- rbind(founders, gen1, gen2, gen3)
demoPed$gen <- findGeneration(demoPed$id, demoPed$sire, demoPed$dam)
nrow(demoPed)
## [1] 33
table(demoPed$sex, useNA = "ifany")
## 
##    F    H    M    U <NA> 
##   15    1   14    2    1

Sex code H (C3) and the unrecorded sex code (E4, NA) each appear exactly once, alongside code U (C8 and E3) and the ordinary F/ M codes that make up the rest – enough for every one of the five node shapes to appear in the diagram below at least once, across 4 generations and 33 animals.

Direct Edge Style

## edgeStyle is now explicit -- Track 2 flipped the package's own default
## to "rectilinear", so this section's own "Direct Edge Style" labeling
## needs edgeStyle = "direct" spelled out rather than relying on the
## (now different) implicit default.
diagramData <- makePedigreeMatingLayout(demoPed, edgeStyle = "direct")
names(diagramData)
## [1] "nodes"              "edges"              "duplicateToReal"   
## [4] "isolatedIds"        "conditions"         "conditionsNotDrawn"
nrow(diagramData$nodes)
## [1] 56
nrow(diagramData$edges)
## [1] 61

makePedigreeMatingLayout returns a list of four elements: nodes (one row per real animal that has recorded parents, mates, or offspring – shaped by sex, dot = Female, square = Male, star = Hermaphrodite, triangle = Unknown, diamond = Other/Unrecorded, with an HTML hover-tooltip giving ID, sex, generation, sire, and dam – plus one small, unlabeled dot per mating and one extra row per duplicate occurrence, each carrying its animal’s own shape, label, and tooltip with a note that it is a duplicate occurrence), edges (parent-to-mating and mating-to-child edges, plus a dashed edge from each duplicate occurrence back to the real animal), duplicateToReal (a named lookup from each duplicate occurrence’s id back to the real animal it represents), and isolatedIds (the ids of animals with no recorded parents, mates, or offspring, which are left out of the diagram; the function also prints a message naming them).

Each node already carries its own fixed x/y position (computed by makePedigreeMatingLayout itself), so rendering it turns vis.js’s usual physics/hierarchical layout off rather than turning one on. drawPedigreeDiagram draws diagramData the way the Diagram tab does – the tab calls the same function – so it reproduces the Diagram tab’s rendering exactly: the legend, a slash through the symbol of an animal whose status is DECEASED, the colored sections of an animal with more than one affected condition, and a genuinely working Export Diagram (PNG) button – try it below. Give it the edgeStyle the layout was made with.5

drawPedigreeDiagram(diagramData, edgeStyle = "direct")

The Select by id dropdown above the diagram – filtered to real animals, excluding mating and duplicate-occurrence nodes – lets you jump straight to a specific animal and dims every node except it and its direct connections – useful for locating one animal in a diagram this size, and just as useful in a real diagram of 704 animals like the one built earlier in this tutorial, where finding one animal by eye is much harder.

Rectilinear Edge Style

The diagram above uses the direct edge style, requested explicitly. Omitting edgeStyle entirely (or passing edgeStyle = "rectilinear" explicitly, as below) draws the same relationships – same demoPed, same animals, same parent/child/mating structure – with strict right angles: a horizontal line directly between mates, a vertical drop to their shared mating dot, a horizontal bar across their children, and a vertical drop into each child, matching the convention the kinship2 R package uses, and matching makePedigreeMatingLayout’s own default (Track 2).

diagramDataRectilinear <- makePedigreeMatingLayout(demoPed,
                                                     edgeStyle = "rectilinear")
names(diagramDataRectilinear)
## [1] "nodes"              "edges"              "duplicateToReal"   
## [4] "isolatedIds"        "conditions"         "conditionsNotDrawn"
nrow(diagramDataRectilinear$nodes)
## [1] 94
nrow(diagramDataRectilinear$edges)
## [1] 99

94 nodes and 99 edges here, versus 56 and 61 for the same 33-animal demoPed under the direct style above – the difference is entirely extra invisible “waypoint” nodes/edges that carry out the right-angle routing (zero size, transparent color, excluded from the Select by id dropdown below just like the mating dots above), not any change to which animals or relationships are shown.6 nodes also gains an extra color.border column under rectilinear – visNetwork::visNetwork() reads it directly, so no extra rendering code is needed.

Rendering it is the same call with edgeStyle = "rectilinear", which makes one difference: drawPedigreeDiagram raises the hover highlight’s reach (highlightNearest’s degree) from 1 to 6. Under rectilinear, a plain individual’s nearest graph neighbor is often one of the invisible waypoint nodes above rather than a visible mating dot, so degree = 1 (correct for direct) can highlight nothing visible at all on hover; 6 restores visible feedback for the common case. It is a deliberate compromise, not a complete fix, because the invisible waypoints count as steps: on the bundled 375-animal rhesus pedigree, hovering an animal lights everything that the direct style’s degree = 1 lights for all but 2 animals, whose parents’ mating dot is just out of reach (their family’s connectors were rerouted around crowded lines, which adds waypoints). One mating pair with nine or more full siblings reaches the same limit; the widest pair in the bundled pedigrees has four. A larger degree would cover these cases, but it highlights more of the diagram on every hover, so the simpler, tighter hover was kept. The live Shiny app’s Diagram tab applies this same style-aware degree automatically when you switch the “Diagram Edge Style” toggle.

drawPedigreeDiagram(diagramDataRectilinear, edgeStyle = "rectilinear")

The live Shiny app also caps how large a pedigree it will render as a diagram, and the cap itself is style-aware: 750 animals under direct, 400 under rectilinear – because the rectilinear style’s extra waypoint nodes make an equivalent-size diagram roughly 1.9x heavier to render. Both caps are internal to the Shiny app (R/modPedigree.R); the script-callable functions demonstrated here have no such limit of their own.

Twin/Zygosity Connectors

A recorded pedigree has no way to represent that two siblings are twins, or how confident that twin call is – that information has to come from outside the pedigree, typically a curator-maintained sidecar file. readTwinRelations reads such a file (Excel or delimited text, columns id1, id2, code) with no validation of its own; checkTwinRelations then checks the result against the pedigree – both ids must exist, an MZ twin (monozygotic) or DZ twin (dizygotic) pair must already share both recorded parents, and an MZ twin pair must additionally match in recorded sex, while a UZ twin (zygosity undetermined) pair has no such precondition. The result of checkTwinRelations should be passed to makePedigreeMatingLayout’s optional twinRelations argument; the layout function does not validate it itself. The argument adds a dashed twin-connector edge between the pair, styled by zygosity code – the same connectors shown in the live app’s Diagram tab.

twinPed <- data.frame(
  id = c("F1", "F2", "S1", "S2"),
  sire = c(NA, NA, "F1", "F1"),
  dam = c(NA, NA, "F2", "F2"),
  sex = c("M", "F", "F", "M"),
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)
twinPed$gen <- findGeneration(twinPed$id, twinPed$sire, twinPed$dam)
twinRelationsCsv <- tempfile(fileext = ".csv")
writeLines(c("id1,id2,code", "S1,S2,UZ twin"), twinRelationsCsv)

S1 and S2 are full siblings (both recorded parents are F1/F2), so a UZ twin call between them passes validation:

twinRelations <- checkTwinRelations(twinPed, readTwinRelations(twinRelationsCsv))
twinRelations
id1 id2 code
S1 S2 UZ twin
twinDiagramData <- makePedigreeMatingLayout(twinPed, twinRelations = twinRelations)
twinDiagramData$edges
from to dashes smooth.enabled smooth.type smooth.roundness color width label
3 F1 __union_1 FALSE NA NA NA NA NA NA
4 F2 __union_1 FALSE NA NA NA NA NA NA
5 S1 S2 14, 8 NA NA NA #009E73 NA ?
1 __union_1 drop_union_1 FALSE NA NA NA #2B7CE9 NA NA
2 __bar_S1 S1 FALSE NA NA NA #2B7CE9 NA NA
31 __bar_S2 S2 FALSE NA NA NA #2B7CE9 NA NA
41 __bar_S1 drop_union_1 FALSE NA NA NA #2B7CE9 NA NA
51 drop_union_1 __bar_S2 FALSE NA NA NA #2B7CE9 NA NA

Compare the edges table above to what makePedigreeMatingLayout returns for the same pedigree without twinRelations: the union/parent -child edges are identical, but only the version above has the extra row connecting S1 directly to S2 (dashed, labeled "?" for the undetermined zygosity code) – that row exists only because a validated twinRelations table was supplied.

Kinship of Identical Twins

Of the three zygosity codes, only MZ twin changes a kinship value: a DZ twin or UZ twin row leaves kinship’s result as it is. Identical twins carry the same genes, so kinship, given a twinRelations table, sets each declared MZ twin pair’s kinship to the kinship an animal has with itself, and carries the change on to the twins’ relatives. The pair above is a female and a male and cannot be an MZ twin pair, so this small pedigree has two full sisters declared identical twins and a daughter of the first of them:

mzPed <- data.frame(
  id = c("F1", "F2", "T1", "T2", "M3", "D1"),
  sire = c(NA, NA, "F1", "F1", NA, "M3"),
  dam = c(NA, NA, "F2", "F2", NA, "T1"),
  sex = c("M", "F", "F", "F", "M", "F"),
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)
mzPed$gen <- findGeneration(mzPed$id, mzPed$sire, mzPed$dam)
mzTwins <- checkTwinRelations(mzPed, data.frame(
  id1 = "T1", id2 = "T2", code = "MZ twin", stringsAsFactors = FALSE
))
plainKmat <- kinship(mzPed$id, mzPed$sire, mzPed$dam, mzPed$gen)
twinKmat <- kinship(mzPed$id, mzPed$sire, mzPed$dam, mzPed$gen,
                    twinRelations = mzTwins)
plainKmat[c("T1", "T2", "D1"), c("T1", "T2", "D1")]
##      T1    T2    D1
## T1 0.50 0.250 0.250
## T2 0.25 0.500 0.125
## D1 0.25 0.125 0.500
twinKmat[c("T1", "T2", "D1"), c("T1", "T2", "D1")]
##      T1   T2   D1
## T1 0.50 0.50 0.25
## T2 0.50 0.50 0.25
## D1 0.25 0.25 0.50

The twins’ kinship rises from 0.25, that of full sisters, to 0.5, and the daughter’s kinship with her mother’s twin rises from 0.125, that of a niece and her aunt, to 0.25, the same as with her own mother. A matrix built this way is the one to pass on as kinshipMatrix, as the next section explains.

Passing a Kinship Matrix You Already Have

makePedigreeMatingLayout marks a mating unit as consanguineous when its sire and dam are related, and it works that out by computing a kinship matrix of the pedigree itself. If you already hold a kinship matrix for the same pedigree, pass it as kinshipMatrix and the layout uses it instead of making its own. The matrix needs the animal ids as its row and column names. It is then the only source of the consanguinity marks: twinRelations goes on drawing the twin connectors and nothing else, so a matrix that should reflect declared monozygotic twins has to be built with kinship’s own twinRelations argument before it is passed in.

demoKmat <- kinship(demoPed$id, demoPed$sire, demoPed$dam, demoPed$gen)
layoutFromPed <- makePedigreeMatingLayout(demoPed)
layoutFromMatrix <- makePedigreeMatingLayout(demoPed, kinshipMatrix = demoKmat)
identical(layoutFromMatrix$edges, layoutFromPed$edges)
## [1] TRUE
unnamedMatrixMessage <- tryCatch(
  makePedigreeMatingLayout(demoPed, kinshipMatrix = unname(demoKmat)),
  error = conditionMessage
)
unnamedMatrixMessage
## [1] "makePedigreeMatingLayout() requires 'kinshipMatrix' to be a matrix (or Matrix) with row and column names set to individual ids, or NULL."

The layout built from the matrix has the same edges as the one that computed its own, and a matrix without ids is refused with a message that names kinshipMatrix.

Genetic Value Analysis

Your genetic value analysis must be carefully performed. The next three commands set up the entire pedigree for analysis. The first of these three commands set all of the pedigree members to be part of the population of interest by setting the population column to TRUE for all individuals.

ped <- setPopulation(breederPed, NULL)

Note that a new pedigree object (ped) is being created.

probands <- ped$id[ped$population]
ped <- trimPedigree(probands, ped,
  removeUninformative = FALSE,
  addBackParents = FALSE
)

The arguments to reportGV are all optional except for ped, but you may often want to use non-default values. The principal arguments are described below. Further arguments (updateProgress, breedingTable, gestationTable, breedingAgeDefault, gestationDefault, kinshipOverrides, twinRelations, guCutoff, zScoreCutoff and axisPriority) are described in ?reportGV.

geneticValue <- reportGV(ped,
  guIter = 50L,
  guThresh = 3L,
  byID = TRUE,
  updateProgress = NULL
)
summary(geneticValue)
## The genetic value report 
## Individuals in Pedigree: 3694 
## Male Founders: 141
## Female Founders: 122
## Total Founders: 263 
## Founder Equivalents: 241.84 
## Founder Genome Equivalents: 164.01 +/- 0.04 
## Live Offspring: 4052 
## High Value Individuals: 1593 
## Low Value Individuals: 729

What happens if we limit our analysis to the trimmed pedigree? Remember that the trimmed pedigree still contains all of the genetic information that the full pedigree has for the focal animals.

trimmedGeneticValue <- reportGV(trimmedPed,
  guIter = 50L,
  guThresh = 3L,
  byID = TRUE,
  updateProgress = NULL
)
summary(trimmedGeneticValue)
## The genetic value report 
## Individuals in Pedigree: 327 
## Male Founders: 3
## Female Founders: 17
## Total Founders: 20 
## Founder Equivalents: 109.67 
## Founder Genome Equivalents: 47.49 +/- 0.32 
## Live Offspring: 321 
## High Value Individuals: 233 
## Low Value Individuals: 94

It is clear that limiting your analysis to the animals of interest reduces the effort required to examine the animals of interest.

Using known genotypes

Known genotypes give the gene drop real alleles to start from in place of simulated ones. The Input tab reads them when “Pedigree(s) and genotypes in one file” is chosen and the file has two allele columns (first and second, first_name and second_name, or allele_1 and allele_2), and its QC Summary says which it read. A script gives a pedigree the same integer codes with addGenotype. It numbers each distinct allele label from 10001, in sorted order over both columns, and adds the codes as the integer columns first and second. reportGV finds those two columns by itself, and getGVGenotype shows what it finds.

The next chunk reads the package’s one-file example, a rhesus MHC pedigree in which some animals have allele labels in first_name and second_name. It hands addGenotype the rows that have labels, counts the animals with codes, runs reportGV and counts the genotyped animals at each genome uniqueness value. Each of those animals starts the gene drop from its own two alleles; the alleles of every other animal are simulated or passed down from them.

genotypeFile <- system.file("extdata", "examples",
  "obfuscated_rhesus_mhc_ped_with_genotypes.csv",
  package = "nprcgenekeepr"
)
labelPed <- qcStudbook(getPedigree(genotypeFile),
  reportErrors = FALSE, reportChanges = FALSE
)
labelColumns <- c("first_name", "second_name")
hasLabels <- !is.na(labelPed$first_name) | !is.na(labelPed$second_name)
genotypePed <- addGenotype(
  labelPed[, !(names(labelPed) %in% labelColumns)],
  labelPed[hasLabels, c("id", labelColumns)]
)
c(animals = nrow(genotypePed), with_codes = sum(!is.na(genotypePed$first)))
##    animals with_codes 
##        375         31
genotypeGV <- reportGV(genotypePed,
  guIter = 200L,
  guThresh = 3L,
  byID = TRUE,
  updateProgress = NULL
)
genotypedGu <- genotypeGV$report$gu[genotypeGV$report$id %in%
  genotypePed$id[!is.na(genotypePed$first)]]
table(genotypedGu)
## genotypedGu
##   0  50 100 
##   4  15  12

Detailed look at the Genetic Value Report object

The names of the object within the genetic value report object (trimmedGeneticValue) can be listed as shown in the next line of code.

names(trimmedGeneticValue)
##  [1] "report"          "kinship"         "gu"              "fe"             
##  [5] "fg"              "fgSE"            "neGD"            "neSexRatio"     
##  [9] "neVariance"      "maleFounders"    "femaleFounders"  "nMaleFounders"  
## [13] "nFemaleFounders" "total"

The report object (an R dataframe) can in-turn be examined.

names(trimmedGeneticValue$report) ## column names
##  [1] "id"              "sex"             "age"             "birth"          
##  [5] "exit"            "population"      "origin"          "sire"           
##  [9] "dam"             "indivMeanKin"    "zScores"         "gu"             
## [13] "guSE"            "totalOffspring"  "livingOffspring" "parentage"      
## [17] "flagged"         "value"           "rank"
nrow(trimmedGeneticValue$report) ## Number of rows
## [1] 327

The report is more conveniently used as a separate object. The next section of code rounds some of the numerical values and converts all columns to characters for display as a table where only the first 10 lines are included.

rpt <- trimmedGeneticValue[["report"]]
rpt$indivMeanKin <- round(rpt$indivMeanKin, 5L)
rpt$zScores <- round(rpt$zScores, 2L)
rpt$gu <- round(rpt$gu, 5L)
rpt <- toCharacter(rpt)
names(rpt) <- headerDisplayNames(names(rpt))
knitr::kable(rpt[1L:10L, ]) # needs more work for display purposes.
Ego ID Sex Age (in years) Birth Date Exit Date Breeding Colony Member Origin Sire ID Dam ID Individual Mean Kinship Z-score (Mean Kinship) Genome Uniqueness (%) NA Total Offspring Living Offspring NA NA Value Designation Rank
KZM9RB M 30.1 1989-05-03 NA TRUE UWTJQ0 BLLUWW 0.00329 -2.30 92 2.618615 0 0 one unknown parent TRUE High Value 1
CLSVU6 F 23.9 1995-08-02 NA TRUE ULV9M7 SUFWJI 0.00951 -1.18 90 2.857143 1 1 one unknown parent FALSE High Value 2
1SPLS8 F 7.9 2011-07-26 NA TRUE U9APLW 142GKP 0.01066 -0.97 84 3.331973 0 0 one unknown parent FALSE High Value 3
WK89I9 F 21.1 1998-05-26 NA TRUE U5QF9U KZX47Z 0.01212 -0.71 80 3.499271 0 0 one unknown parent FALSE High Value 4
8YP6PA M 5.0 2014-07-04 NA TRUE UD26S6 PU7RSG 0.01208 -0.72 77 3.559982 0 0 one unknown parent FALSE High Value 5
01QRQ4 F 18.2 2001-04-04 NA TRUE VDBGDP TH7HTY 0.00373 -2.23 74 3.568570 0 0 known FALSE High Value 6
IZDV8K M 7.7 2011-09-29 NA TRUE U5B4PI PI4VHT 0.01173 -0.78 74 3.568570 0 0 one unknown parent FALSE High Value 7
R6HV9A M 22.1 1997-05-13 NA TRUE HPSHXC BCJJKN 0.00625 -1.77 73 4.783048 0 0 known FALSE High Value 8
CFD12A M 20.8 1998-08-25 NA TRUE U79BJ1 WFQENR 0.01139 -0.84 71 3.525418 0 0 one unknown parent FALSE High Value 9
3MMZD4 M 12.2 2007-03-24 NA TRUE K7900I 5W3NTM 0.00536 -1.93 70 4.040610 0 0 known FALSE High Value 10

We start the next lines of code by getting a fresh copy of the genetic value report since we changed all of the numeric values to characters in the last section to print the table. These lines demonstrate one way of extracting the component objects from the genetic value object.

rpt <- trimmedGeneticValue[["report"]]
kmat <- trimmedGeneticValue[["kinship"]]
f <- trimmedGeneticValue[["total"]]
mf <- trimmedGeneticValue[["maleFounders"]]
ff <- trimmedGeneticValue[["femaleFounders"]]
nmf <- trimmedGeneticValue[["nMaleFounders"]]
nff <- trimmedGeneticValue[["nFemaleFounders"]]
fe <- trimmedGeneticValue[["fe"]]
fg <- trimmedGeneticValue[["fg"]]

It is informative to examine the distribution of genetic uniqueness, mean kinship, and z-scores (normalized mean kinship values).

Creation of the boxplot for the genetic uniqueness values is shown below.

gu <- rpt[, "gu"]
guBox <- ggplot(data.frame(gu = gu), aes(x = "", y = gu)) +
  geom_boxplot(
    color = "darkblue",
    fill = "lightblue",
    notch = TRUE,
    outlier.color = "red",
    outlier.shape = 1L
  ) +
  theme_classic() +
  geom_jitter(width = 0.2) +
  coord_flip() +
  ylab("Score") +
  ggtitle("Genetic Uniqueness")
print(guBox)

Genetic Uniqueness Box Plot.

Extraction of the individual mean kinship values and their corresponding z-scores is shown in the next code chunk.

mk <- rpt[, "indivMeanKin"]
zs <- rpt[, "zScores"]

Creation of boxplots for the mean kinship and z-scores is left as an exercise.

X-Chromosome Kinship

By default kinship gives the autosomal kinship coefficient. With chrtype = "x" it gives X-chromosome kinship instead. A male carries a single X, which comes from his mother alone; a female’s X-linked kinship follows the same average-of-the-parents rule as the autosomes. Because the calculation depends on sex, sex is then required: one value per animal in the order of id, using the package’s "M" and "F" codes (any other value, NA included, counts as unknown). An animal of unknown sex that has recorded parents gets NA kinship with everyone.

xPed <- nprcgenekeepr::smallPed
xPed$gen <- findGeneration(xPed$id, xPed$sire, xPed$dam)
autosomeKmat <- kinship(xPed$id, xPed$sire, xPed$dam, xPed$gen)
xKmat <- kinship(xPed$id, xPed$sire, xPed$dam, xPed$gen,
                 chrtype = "x", sex = xPed$sex)
unique(data.frame(sex = xPed$sex, autosome = unname(diag(autosomeKmat)),
                  x = unname(diag(xKmat))))
sex autosome x
M 0.5 1.0
F 0.5 0.5
xPairs <- data.frame(
  first = c("A", "B", "D", "E"), second = c("C", "C", "F", "F"),
  relation = c("father and son", "mother and son", "father and daughter",
               "mother and daughter"))
pairIndex <- as.matrix(xPairs[, c("first", "second")])
xPairs$autosome <- autosomeKmat[pairIndex]
xPairs$x <- xKmat[pairIndex]
xPairs
first second relation autosome x
A C father and son 0.25 0.00
B C mother and son 0.25 0.50
D F father and daughter 0.25 0.50
E F mother and daughter 0.25 0.25

The first table is each animal’s kinship with itself: on the X a male’s is higher than his autosomal value, because he carries a single X, and a female’s is unchanged. In the second, a father and his son share no X, since a son’s X comes from his mother alone, while a mother and her son, and a father and his daughter, share more of it than they do on the autosomes.

Colony Snapshots Over Time

A snapshot is one dated row of colony-level numbers: the settings and counts that say what the numbers rest on, the values reportGV reports for the colony as a whole, and summaries of the per-animal kinship and genome uniqueness values. Rows for successive dates make a history, which is what the Genetic-Health Trends tab of the Shiny application keeps and plots. The functions in this section do the same work in a script.

The chunks below use the example pedigree that ships with the package, qcPed, and few gene-drop iterations so that each runs in a moment. Use more for an analysis you will report (the default of reportGV is 1000).

Recording a Snapshot

createColonySnapshot turns one reportGV result into a one-row snapshot. Give it the pedigree the analysis was run on, the result, the membershipRule that says who was analyzed (here "wholePedigree", every animal in the pedigree), and the same guIter and guThresh the analysis used, because the snapshot records them and the result does not carry them. appendColonySnapshot adds the row to a history (NULL starts a new one) and returns the history in date order; it writes nothing. The date is fixed here only so that the printed values are the same each time the document is built; leave it out to date the snapshot today.

set.seed(1L)
snapshotPed <- qcPed
snapshotGV <- reportGV(snapshotPed, guIter = 50L, guThresh = 1L)
firstSnapshot <- createColonySnapshot(snapshotPed, snapshotGV,
  "wholePedigree",
  guIter = 50L, guThresh = 1L, snapshotDate = as.Date("2018-01-01")
)
snapshotHistory <- appendColonySnapshot(NULL, firstSnapshot)
snapshotHistory[, c("snapshotDate", "membershipRule", "nAnimals", "fe", "fg")]
snapshotDate membershipRule nAnimals fe fg
2018-01-01 wholePedigree 280 77.04028 52.16436

The snapshot has 27 columns; the table shows five of them.

Rebuilding Earlier Dates

A history of one row shows no trend. backfillColonySnapshots rebuilds a snapshot for each date you name from the birth and exit dates already in the pedigree, so you need not wait for seasons of recording. It works out which animals were alive on each date, analyzes them and their ancestors with reportGV, and summarizes the result as createColonySnapshot does. Give it the full pedigree, not one already trimmed to a focal list of animals. The rows are filed under their own membership rule, "reconstructedLiving", so they form a line of their own and never mix with recorded rows. Passing the history as existingHistory keeps its rows and adds the rebuilt ones.

Before the gene drop is spent, previewBackfillSupport gives the counts each date rests on, without the analysis.

set.seed(1L)
earlierDates <- as.Date(c("2005-01-01", "2008-01-01", "2010-01-01"))
backfillPreview <- previewBackfillSupport(snapshotPed, dates = earlierDates)
backfillPreview
snapshotDate nLiving nPlacedByOffspring nPossiblyAlive pctSireKnown pctDamKnown
2005-01-01 86 0 0 56.97674 89.53488
2008-01-01 79 0 0 59.49367 91.13924
2010-01-01 63 0 0 68.25397 90.47619
earlierSnapshots <- backfillColonySnapshots(snapshotPed,
  dates = earlierDates,
  guIter = 50L, guThresh = 1L, existingHistory = snapshotHistory
)
snapshotHistory <- earlierSnapshots$history
snapshotHistory[, c("snapshotDate", "membershipRule", "nAnimals", "fe", "fg")]
snapshotDate membershipRule nAnimals fe fg
2005-01-01 reconstructedLiving 86 66.68823 40.32350
2008-01-01 reconstructedLiving 79 71.95316 38.93590
2010-01-01 reconstructedLiving 63 63.03001 32.81522
2018-01-01 wholePedigree 280 77.04028 52.16436

nLiving is the number of animals each date rests on, and pctSireKnown and pctDamKnown are the percentage of them whose sire or dam is recorded. nPlacedByOffspring and nPossiblyAlive count animals with no birth date (?backfillColonySnapshots says how each is placed). Read these counts beside the trend: where few sires are recorded the sex-ratio effective size reads low because of the missing records, not because of the colony.

A rebuilt snapshot looks back with today’s records: a parent identified later counts as known earlier, today’s genotypes are used for every date, and only animals with a birth date, or with an offspring that has one, are placed. Two close dates can differ only by the random sampling every gene drop has.

A date that cannot be analyzed does not stop the others. It is listed in the skipped element with the reason, and one warning says how many dates failed. Here 0 dates were skipped.

Saving, Reading and Checking a History

Neither appendColonySnapshot nor backfillColonySnapshots writes a file. You keep the history yourself, as the application does when you download it, with write.csv and row.names = FALSE. readSnapshotHistory reads the file back (delimited text or Excel) but does not check it, and it leaves the dates as text. checkSnapshotHistory checks the structure and the values, stops with a message that names the problem, and otherwise returns the history with the dates as dates.

historyFile <- tempfile(fileext = ".csv")
write.csv(snapshotHistory, historyFile, row.names = FALSE)
readBack <- readSnapshotHistory(historyFile)
class(readBack$snapshotDate)
## [1] "character"
checkedHistory <- checkSnapshotHistory(readBack)
class(checkedHistory$snapshotDate)
## [1] "Date"

Comparing Two Dates

calcSnapshotDeltas lists, metric by metric, the value on each of two dates and the difference between them. The two dates must belong to one membership-rule series, because rules are never compared with each other. A history that holds both recorded and rebuilt rows therefore needs to be told which series; without membershipRule the function stops and names the rules it finds.

mixedRuleMessage <- tryCatch(
  calcSnapshotDeltas(checkedHistory, from = "2005-01-01", to = "2010-01-01"),
  error = conditionMessage
)
mixedRuleMessage
## [1] "Snapshot history holds several membershipRule values (reconstructedLiving, wholePedigree); pass 'membershipRule' to pick the series to compare."
deltas <- calcSnapshotDeltas(checkedHistory,
  from = "2005-01-01", to = "2010-01-01",
  membershipRule = "reconstructedLiving"
)
deltas[deltas$metric %in% c("nAnimals", "fe", "fg", "neSexRatio"), ]
metric from to delta comparabilityFlag
1 nAnimals 86.00000 63.00000 -23.000000 NA
4 fe 66.68823 63.03001 -3.658216 NA
5 fg 40.32350 32.81522 -7.508285 NA
8 neSexRatio 25.26316 17.14286 -8.120301 NA

The comparabilityFlag column is NA when the two snapshots were made with the same settings. When they were not, it names each setting that differs, so a change caused by a different number of gene-drop iterations is not mistaken for a change in the colony.

Plotting the Trend

plotSnapshotTrends draws the history as one ggplot object with a panel for each metric, the date along the bottom and one colored series for each membership rule. The rebuilt series is dashed, and the caption says that the dashed lines were rebuilt and not recorded at the time. Where the history carries a standard error, as for founder genome equivalents and mean genome uniqueness, the panel shows a ribbon for the sampling uncertainty of the gene drop. A snapshot made with different settings from the previous one of its series is drawn with a different point shape and named in the caption. A trend needs at least two snapshots, and metrics chooses the panels (the default draws every metric column). ncol sets how many columns of panels to draw: three keeps these three panels side by side, and a narrow figure needs fewer, so that each panel stays wide enough for its title.

trendPlot <- plotSnapshotTrends(checkedHistory,
                                metrics = c("fe", "fg", "meanGu"), ncol = 3L)
trendPlot

Trend lines of three colony genetic-health measures over the snapshot dates. The rebuilt snapshots form a dashed line and the one recorded snapshot is a single point.

Breeding Group Formation

The primary purpose of nprcgenekeepr is to form breeding groups according to our best information regarding maintaining the genetic characteristics we desire and the realities associated with other animal husbandry needs.

There are several options you must consider when forming groups using nprcgenekeepr, which we will examine using code below.

You decisions regarding each of the above options are expressed in a call to the function groupAddAssign. A complete description of the function and its arguments is available using the code shown below.

?groupAddAssign

Below are the descriptions of the principal function parameters extracted from the documentation near the time this tutorial was prepared. The function has further parameters (maxCandidates, exhaustive, maxExhaustiveCandidates, exhaustiveTimeLimit, and ancestryRules, which is used in the Ancestry Rules section below), and it returns a list with the items group, score, candidates (up to maxCandidates distinct candidate solutions, best first) and, when withKin is TRUE, groupKin; see ?groupAddAssign for their descriptions.

We will use the trimmedPed pedigree in our code.

For illustration purposes we are going to keep the numbers of candidates, groups, and iterations fairly small.

We will get first some animal IDs to use for our candidates by selecting animals at least 2 years old at the time this pedigree was sampled (01-01-2015) that are still in the colony.

candidates <- trimmedPed$id[trimmedPed$birth < as.Date("2013-01-01") &
  !is.na(trimmedPed$birth) &
  is.na(trimmedPed$exit)]
table(trimmedPed$sex[trimmedPed$id %in% candidates])
## 
##   F   M   H   U 
## 184  96   0   0

Our candidates are made up of 184 females and 96 males. The parameters currentGroups, threshold, ignore, minAge, sexRatio, withKin, and updateProgress are allowed to take their default values in the calls below. The default sexRatio of 0 means that no sex ratio is imposed.

Harems

The following group assignments will be forming harem groups. This is done by setting harem to . Setting iter to 100 or more will increase optimal composition of breeding groups

haremGrp <- groupAddAssign(
  kmat = trimmedGeneticValue[["kinship"]],
  ped = trimmedPed,
  candidates = candidates,
  iter = 10L,
  numGp = 6L,
  harem = TRUE
)
haremGrp$group
## [[1]]
##  [1] "SXSVEH" "G8MCV7" "99BMJW" "5EDIEE" "6X6BG9" "2Z4YLY" "IH1KPA" "0X4W26"
##  [9] "XEC0M5" "3GECJJ" "Q7U139" "6F9FB8" "JLFKV8" "B1WVCN" "BKWE4D" "C18V6I"
## [17] "F45799" "S056D5" "QRZK48" "DHNQ1W" "D33J06" "38K2SR" "TEACA3" "5EDLL7"
## [25] "M9PVG5" "Y6DB6L" "LS184H" "AR5U44" "ZPS15A" "1CZM30"
## 
## [[2]]
##  [1] "9FRCIE" "50D77I" "AW400C" "Q8U9LB" "7B9CA6" "5KWNMZ" "92UG4N" "1KJ2MG"
##  [9] "PI4VHT" "87AQLF" "YLRNIK" "DCJJYS" "B228Q6" "MPIQ4N" "WLMGS1" "Z904TJ"
## [17] "VWC5ZH" "FG0SFA" "W0GUKI" "MFKT9C" "PVY432" "W5WIRP" "2F6J3U" "1FAZ0K"
## [25] "MKY9TK" "MTCAIG" "WJXIH9"
## 
## [[3]]
##  [1] "1E8KD1" "YTJ2UL" "WK89I9" "72LYDE" "465ERA" "FL170P" "CS23RV" "DKIM6U"
##  [9] "DI4AHD" "B134XZ" "SHG3RB" "5W621W" "MX4J7G" "QW2Z3R" "RVHVTZ" "46ZHKN"
## [17] "PU7RSG" "FB5L3N" "CRPXY7" "EX5K0S" "SCFSBF" "6KWVRI" "J3F6PD" "9MG040"
## [25] "7NE2UT" "X694YR" "FJS7RQ" "I5CI33" "I8ABC7" "WNEAS6" "1QVS67" "83HQBN"
## 
## [[4]]
##  [1] "5KFB90" "AFZKBS" "QCA36T" "967Y3D" "N79QXB" "DPXEQE" "8JUUJ9" "QQMBT1"
##  [9] "QWKFBH" "MYUMMX" "D4B0RM" "DRXMW4" "PBAFJF" "QCENKM" "ZQXZYB" "1SPLS8"
## [17] "EZ2F8A" "KX0RJ3" "R5AYJK" "9P0DES" "F7I2ED" "S5H1GC" "Y0TCYX" "YFCIHJ"
## [25] "WKY2SZ" "XYRDKV" "S7IWWA" "5ERY5Z" "1SSCJC" "MH88T6" "EMV4P6" "01QRQ4"
## [33] "AIHJ8Z" "5BPBUI" "KZY6PD" "ESUIAF" "321LLB" "CLSVU6" "BCJJKN" "0XTZQ1"
## [41] "414N7M" "SH3FB7" "7ZNY75"
## 
## [[5]]
##  [1] "80F2MI" "ILVQVB" "0SGJ12" "W6MDVK" "TXZUKC" "AP1YLW" "ZH3YG1" "PYPM1W"
##  [9] "CMMUKU" "G25E3F" "D9P18Y" "GTLA8R" "AR17R5" "1CIRC9" "3DTD2N" "XFWVVX"
## [17] "GCBYDW" "30J3CQ" "KEA4QG" "E5Q33K" "S3EBGZ" "AZ3L0D" "PJ72W1" "13B1QL"
## [25] "LVYYNY" "G58RGY" "1VP3UC" "S222R3" "NK802Y" "ZATMEE" "0IIAEN" "GIIEUD"
## 
## [[6]]
##  [1] "B2CKHA" "HE0SCR" "N5QBWD" "7RA57Q" "3YJIMV" "DH9WJQ" "WI38KZ" "RJ4JPC"
##  [9] "K3TNHP" "CHK1ZX" "TYEWF1" "TQEMY6" "N4NV8B" "Q17CG3" "0HYZ23" "GAS52W"
## [17] "WTE53B" "LYSLPP" "MB6NYQ" "H2J6UA" "5IAFMK" "BS3RLE" "T3QPW5" "3SKITJ"
## [25] "1GF3GM" "NN3GDQ"
## 
## [[7]]
## [1] NA

Notice that the list has one more element than the six groups requested. The last element is not a breeding group. With harem groups it is a lone NA, which is not an animal (the next section shows what it holds when a sex ratio is set).

We can identify and list the males in each group with the following code.

sapply(haremGrp$group, function(ids) {
  ids[ids %in% trimmedPed$id[trimmedPed$sex == "M"]]
})
## [[1]]
## [1] "SXSVEH"
## 
## [[2]]
## [1] "9FRCIE"
## 
## [[3]]
## [1] "1E8KD1"
## 
## [[4]]
## [1] "5KFB90"
## 
## [[5]]
## [1] "80F2MI"
## 
## [[6]]
## [1] "B2CKHA"
## 
## [[7]]
## logical(0)

It is easy to notice that the male is listed first within each breeding group.

We can also see the number of animals and the sex ratios created in each group. Since these are harem groups the sex ratios are determined by the number of animals in the individual groups.

lines <- sapply(haremGrp$group, function(ids) {
  paste0(
    "Count: ", length(ids), " Sex Ratio: ",
    round(calculateSexRatio(ids, trimmedPed), 2)
  )
})
for (line in lines) print(line)
## [1] "Count: 30 Sex Ratio: 29"
## [1] "Count: 27 Sex Ratio: 26"
## [1] "Count: 32 Sex Ratio: 31"
## [1] "Count: 43 Sex Ratio: 42"
## [1] "Count: 32 Sex Ratio: 31"
## [1] "Count: 26 Sex Ratio: 25"
## [1] "Count: 1 Sex Ratio: Inf"

Examination of this table shows that of the 184 females 184 are included in the six groups.

Controlling Sex Ratios

The following group assignments control the sex ratio of the groups formed. This is done by setting sexRatio to the desired number of females per male (here 9, with harem left at its default of FALSE).

sexRatioGrp <- groupAddAssign(
  kmat = trimmedGeneticValue[["kinship"]],
  ped = trimmedPed,
  candidates = candidates,
  iter = 10L,
  numGp = 6L,
  sexRatio = 9.0
)
sexRatioGrp$group
## [[1]]
##  [1] "PVY432" "E3JP0C" "0HYZ23" "321LLB" "ZATMEE" "KZY6PD" "W5WIRP" "B134XZ"
##  [9] "F45799" "PJ72W1" "1SSCJC" "1GF3GM" "WK89I9" "KZM9RB" "MYUMMX" "QCA36T"
## [17] "MTCAIG" "DI4AHD" "R5AYJK" "DH9WJQ" "X694YR" "BKWE4D" "S056D5" "YLRNIK"
## [25] "KXHGRH" "Y6DB6L" "LS184H" "BS3RLE"
## 
## [[2]]
##  [1] "ESUIAF" "RY1AZM" "G58RGY" "RJ4JPC" "F7I2ED" "6F9FB8" "NK802Y" "3SKITJ"
##  [9] "EMV4P6" "QWKFBH" "6KWVRI" "ZPS15A" "M9PVG5" "WQUN84" "Q17CG3" "BCJJKN"
## [17] "TQEMY6" "CRPXY7" "VWC5ZH" "AR17R5" "YTJ2UL" "CLSVU6" "7ZNY75" "414N7M"
## [25] "A6A1M1" "I8ABC7" "AZ3L0D" "0IIAEN" "S222R3" "6X6BG9" "J3F6PD" "SCFSBF"
## [33] "7NE2UT"
## 
## [[3]]
##  [1] "1CZM30" "QRWYQZ" "CHK1ZX" "S3EBGZ" "FB5L3N" "AFZKBS" "D4B0RM" "3DTD2N"
##  [9] "C18V6I" "2Z4YLY" "01QRQ4" "1QVS67" "GCBYDW" "K7900I" "92UG4N" "MFKT9C"
## [17] "Y0TCYX" "0XTZQ1" "DCJJYS" "30J3CQ" "AW400C" "IH1KPA" "G25E3F" "GIIEUD"
## [25] "SXSVEH" "XFWVVX" "1KJ2MG" "HE0SCR" "MB6NYQ" "Q7U139"
## 
## [[4]]
##  [1] "3GECJJ" "3QHAFI" "5KWNMZ" "DRXMW4" "1FAZ0K" "FL170P" "13B1QL" "TXZUKC"
##  [9] "WI38KZ" "8JUUJ9" "MH88T6" "0SGJ12" "GTLA8R" "JSAP3H" "QCENKM" "TEACA3"
## [17] "72LYDE" "JLFKV8" "WLMGS1" "50D77I" "PU7RSG" "W6MDVK" "5EDIEE" "YFCIHJ"
## [25] "IZDV8K" "QW2Z3R" "465ERA" "38K2SR" "967Y3D" "WTE53B" "RVHVTZ" "87AQLF"
## [33] "AR5U44" "TYEWF1" "Z7NBA2"
## 
## [[5]]
##  [1] "D9P18Y" "XL658N" "LVYYNY" "9P0DES" "MX4J7G" "FJS7RQ" "2F6J3U" "ZQXZYB"
##  [9] "46ZHKN" "EZ2F8A" "KX0RJ3" "B1WVCN" "WNEAS6" "T38W6H" "9MG040" "N79QXB"
## [17] "DKIM6U" "Q8U9LB" "AIHJ8Z" "CMMUKU" "W0GUKI" "ILVQVB" "PI4VHT" "5EDLL7"
## [25] "LN1DLY" "DPXEQE" "S5H1GC" "D33J06" "SH3FB7" "99BMJW" "5ERY5Z"
## 
## [[6]]
##  [1] "7B9CA6" "ER464J" "1SPLS8" "0X4W26" "7RA57Q" "1CIRC9" "XEC0M5" "FG0SFA"
##  [9] "AP1YLW" "GAS52W" "5BPBUI" "NN3GDQ" "83HQBN" "R6HV9A" "CS23RV" "H2J6UA"
## [17] "K3TNHP" "SHG3RB" "MPIQ4N" "PBAFJF" "T3QPW5" "B228Q6" "3YJIMV" "QRZK48"
## [25] "A98D7P" "1VP3UC" "WKY2SZ" "KEA4QG"
## 
## [[7]]
##  [1] "5IAFMK" "HLQ9SY" "B2CKHA" "GDXWJ1" "TR5L57" "XC304E" "1E8KD1" "5KFB90"
##  [9] "5PW7WT" "AEP5EG" "BW10CL" "CFD12A" "CHJ9D2" "FTVE03" "G2GYST" "G8MCV7"
## [17] "IRFJ09" "LMJWTN" "N4NV8B" "N5QBWD" "Q9LWGX" "RNQU14" "09LFE4" "3MMZD4"
## [25] "55BPSE" "5XVTVH" "8IG767" "9FRCIE" "FFGPS4" "FG6L7S" "LYSLPP" "NHWTJ9"
## [33] "P7RBPI" "TBCE78" "YI16QD" "2F1IV1" "4LHK19" "59NYZE" "5IYDXN" "6KLWVC"
## [41] "80F2MI" "8TV4MT" "AZ4D19" "BTTHAJ" "CHSCFG" "DHNQ1W" "EEGLWY" "FX9E4X"
## [49] "G91ZM6" "I5CI33" "J1R2EW" "LDND6J" "MKY9TK" "MQT080" "NSIC4I" "PHB6TE"
## [57] "PYPM1W" "WHQLH5" "XX0GYV" "XYRDKV" "YHHVC7" "YP910X" "Z904TJ" "ZH3YG1"
## [65] "0V4SAC" "0X1RZ9" "3YHBC1" "55VDSQ" "5W621W" "653J82" "6MEP2C" "76DIT4"
## [73] "80KACX" "B2YJJP" "E5Q33K" "EX5K0S" "FLIZQI" "GM371F" "MEUZ85" "PA9F3J"
## [81] "QQMBT1" "S7IWWA" "TJN1AD" "WJXIH9" "WNKKW3" "XY2CK7" "XZH41H" "YDRD81"
## [89] "Z25D52" "ZDRSG0" "3P9BX6" "7D09WH" "DGZLV3" "S63QDN" "ZW2X4N"

As before, the last element of the list is not a breeding group. Here it holds the 95 candidates that were not placed in any of the six groups.

Again we can identify and list the males in each group with the following code.

sapply(sexRatioGrp$group, function(ids) {
  ids[ids %in% trimmedPed$id[trimmedPed$sex == "M"]]
})
## [[1]]
## [1] "E3JP0C" "KZM9RB" "KXHGRH"
## 
## [[2]]
## [1] "RY1AZM" "WQUN84" "A6A1M1"
## 
## [[3]]
## [1] "QRWYQZ" "K7900I" "SXSVEH"
## 
## [[4]]
## [1] "3QHAFI" "JSAP3H" "IZDV8K" "Z7NBA2"
## 
## [[5]]
## [1] "XL658N" "T38W6H" "LN1DLY"
## 
## [[6]]
## [1] "ER464J" "R6HV9A" "A98D7P"
## 
## [[7]]
##  [1] "HLQ9SY" "B2CKHA" "GDXWJ1" "TR5L57" "XC304E" "1E8KD1" "5KFB90" "5PW7WT"
##  [9] "AEP5EG" "BW10CL" "CFD12A" "CHJ9D2" "FTVE03" "G2GYST" "IRFJ09" "LMJWTN"
## [17] "Q9LWGX" "RNQU14" "09LFE4" "3MMZD4" "55BPSE" "5XVTVH" "8IG767" "9FRCIE"
## [25] "FFGPS4" "FG6L7S" "NHWTJ9" "P7RBPI" "TBCE78" "YI16QD" "2F1IV1" "4LHK19"
## [33] "59NYZE" "5IYDXN" "6KLWVC" "80F2MI" "8TV4MT" "AZ4D19" "BTTHAJ" "CHSCFG"
## [41] "EEGLWY" "FX9E4X" "G91ZM6" "J1R2EW" "LDND6J" "MQT080" "NSIC4I" "PHB6TE"
## [49] "WHQLH5" "XX0GYV" "YHHVC7" "YP910X" "0V4SAC" "0X1RZ9" "3YHBC1" "55VDSQ"
## [57] "653J82" "6MEP2C" "76DIT4" "80KACX" "B2YJJP" "FLIZQI" "GM371F" "MEUZ85"
## [65] "PA9F3J" "TJN1AD" "WNKKW3" "XY2CK7" "XZH41H" "YDRD81" "Z25D52" "ZDRSG0"
## [73] "3P9BX6" "7D09WH" "DGZLV3" "S63QDN" "ZW2X4N"

We can also see the number of animals and the sex ratios created in each group.

lines <- sapply(sexRatioGrp$group, function(ids) {
  paste0(
    "Count: ", length(ids), " Sex Ratio: ",
    round(calculateSexRatio(ids, trimmedPed), 2L)
  )
})
for (line in lines) print(line)
## [1] "Count: 28 Sex Ratio: 8.33"
## [1] "Count: 33 Sex Ratio: 10"
## [1] "Count: 30 Sex Ratio: 9"
## [1] "Count: 35 Sex Ratio: 7.75"
## [1] "Count: 31 Sex Ratio: 9.33"
## [1] "Count: 28 Sex Ratio: 8.33"
## [1] "Count: 95 Sex Ratio: 0.23"

Examination of this table shows that of the 184 females 166 are included in the six groups.

Individual Mate-Pair Analysis

groupAddAssign, used throughout the previous section, forms whole breeding groups. reportMatePairs instead answers a narrower question – for a candidate population, which individual sire/dam pairs are even eligible to be considered (opposite sex, both at or above minAge, or of unknown age), and what does every available kinship/genetic-value signal say about each pair? It composes the package’s existing pair-eligibility machinery into a single report, returning two tables: pairs, one row per eligible sire/dam combination, and excluded, one row per pair dropped and why. It computes no composite ranking score of its own – sort or filter the returned columns as your own workflow requires. Marker-based kinship (markerKinship’s output) and each parent’s genetic-value context (indivMeanKin/gu, from reportGV’s report) can both be supplied as optional enrichment and default to NA when not.

We reuse the candidates vector already built above, restricted further to a small illustrative slice – one male and seven females – so the output stays readable. One of those females is not in the kinship matrix, so six pairs come back below and the excluded table is empty. A full call against all 280 candidates would return one row per opposite-sex, age-eligible pair, which runs into the tens of thousands.

smallCandidates <- head(candidates, 8L)
trimmedPed[trimmedPed$id %in% smallCandidates, c("id", "sex", "age")]
id sex age
1637 WTE53B F 26.1
1669 01QRQ4 F 18.2
1743 CLSVU6 F 23.9
1887 1SPLS8 F 7.9
1934 5IAFMK F 32.0
2072 HLQ9SY M 26.1
2234 XFWVVX F 28.0
2337 6X6BG9 F 22.1
matePairs <- reportMatePairs(trimmedPed, trimmedGeneticValue[["kinship"]],
                              geneticValues = trimmedGeneticValue,
                              populationIds = smallCandidates)
matePairs$pairs
sireId damId kinship markerKinship sireIndivMeanKin sireGu damIndivMeanKin damGu
HLQ9SY 01QRQ4 0.000000 NA 0.0116209 34 0.0037271 74
HLQ9SY CLSVU6 0.000000 NA 0.0116209 34 0.0095125 90
HLQ9SY 1SPLS8 0.000000 NA 0.0116209 34 0.0106633 84
HLQ9SY 5IAFMK 0.000000 NA 0.0116209 34 0.0214784 28
HLQ9SY XFWVVX 0.000000 NA 0.0116209 34 0.0116508 24
HLQ9SY 6X6BG9 0.015625 NA 0.0116209 34 0.0230373 13

With only one male in this slice, every eligible pair shares the same sire, so sireIndivMeanKin/sireGu are identical across rows (both come from trimmedGeneticValue’s report for that one animal); damIndivMeanKin/ damGu vary by dam. markerKinship is NA throughout, since no marker genotype matrix was supplied to this call.

exclude removes a specific id from consideration and records why in the excluded table – useful when a curator already knows a particular animal is unavailable this cycle, independent of age or sex eligibility.

matePairsExcluded <- reportMatePairs(trimmedPed, trimmedGeneticValue[["kinship"]],
                                      geneticValues = trimmedGeneticValue,
                                      populationIds = smallCandidates,
                                      exclude = matePairs$pairs$damId[1L])
matePairsExcluded$excluded
sireId damId reason
HLQ9SY 01QRQ4 user-excluded

One caveat worth knowing before relying on minAge alone to bound a real-world call: a missing (NA) recorded age passes the age screen rather than failing it, on the premise that an unknown age should not silently disqualify an otherwise-eligible animal. populationIds, not minAge, is the reliable way to bound which candidates a call considers.

Ancestry Rules for Mate Pairs

Some centers do not want certain ancestry combinations paired (for example, Indian-origin with Chinese-origin rhesus macaques). reportMatePairs accepts the same center-configurable rules table the Breeding Groups ancestry guardrails use, through ancestryRules. A rule matches a pair whichever animal is the sire and whichever the dam. A block rule moves the matching pair out of pairs and into excluded with the reason "ancestry rule" – here “block” means “not listed as eligible”, not “never placed together”. A flag rule keeps the pair in pairs and annotates it. The pedigree must carry an ancestry column, which the example pedigree below does.

ancPed <- qcStudbook(
  read.csv(system.file("extdata", "examples", "example_ancestry_pedigree.csv",
                       package = "nprcgenekeepr"),
           stringsAsFactors = FALSE, na.strings = c("", "NA")),
  minSireAge = 2, minDamAge = 2, reportChanges = FALSE, reportErrors = FALSE)
ancPed$gen <- findGeneration(ancPed$id, ancPed$sire, ancPed$dam)
ancKmat <- kinship(ancPed$id, ancPed$sire, ancPed$dam, ancPed$gen)
ancestryRules <- checkAncestryRules(readAncestryRules(
  system.file("extdata", "examples", "example_ancestry_rules.csv",
              package = "nprcgenekeepr")))
ancestryRules
ancestry1 ancestry2 severity
INDIAN CHINESE block
INDIAN HYBRID block
INDIAN UNKNOWN flag
INDIAN OTHER flag
ancMatePairs <- reportMatePairs(ancPed, ancKmat, ancestryRules = ancestryRules)
names(ancMatePairs)
## [1] "pairs"            "excluded"         "ancestryCoverage"

With rules supplied, pairs gains three columns: ancestryRule (the matched rule as a sorted "LEVEL-LEVEL" string), ancestrySeverity ("flag" or "block") and ancestryStatus ("violation", or "overridden" for an overridden block rule). All three are NA for a pair no rule matches. Here the only rows with a rule are the three flagged pairs; the five blocked pairs are in excluded.

ancMatePairs$pairs[!is.na(ancMatePairs$pairs$ancestryRule),
                   c("sireId", "damId", "ancestryRule", "ancestrySeverity",
                     "ancestryStatus")]
sireId damId ancestryRule ancestrySeverity ancestryStatus
9 I1 U1 INDIAN-UNKNOWN flag violation
11 O1 I2 INDIAN-OTHER flag violation
20 A1 U1 INDIAN-UNKNOWN flag violation
ancMatePairs$excluded
sireId damId reason ancestryRule
C1 I2 ancestry rule CHINESE-INDIAN
I1 C2 ancestry rule CHINESE-INDIAN
A1 C2 ancestry rule CHINESE-INDIAN
I1 H1 ancestry rule HYBRID-INDIAN
A1 H1 ancestry rule HYBRID-INDIAN

The third element, ancestryCoverage, lists every standardized ancestry level with the number of distinct animals at that level (n) and whether any rule names it (covered). A level with animals but covered = FALSE – here JAPANESE – is one no rule speaks to, which is worth a second look before relying on the rules as complete.

ancMatePairs$ancestryCoverage
ancestry n covered
CHINESE 2 TRUE
INDIAN 3 TRUE
HYBRID 1 TRUE
JAPANESE 2 FALSE
OTHER 1 TRUE
UNKNOWN 1 TRUE

A curator can override a block rule for one call with overriddenRules, a data frame with ancestry1 and ancestry2 columns (unordered, case-insensitive). The blocked pairs then return to pairs, marked "overridden", rather than silently reappearing.

overriddenMatePairs <- reportMatePairs(
  ancPed, ancKmat, ancestryRules = ancestryRules,
  overriddenRules = data.frame(ancestry1 = "CHINESE", ancestry2 = "INDIAN"))
table(overriddenMatePairs$pairs$ancestryStatus, useNA = "ifany")
## 
## overridden  violation       <NA> 
##          3          3         17
table(overriddenMatePairs$excluded$reason)
## 
## ancestry rule 
##             2

Naming a rule that is not in ancestryRules, a flag rule, or the same rule twice is an error, as is giving overriddenRules without ancestryRules. A valid rules table with zero rules is accepted: the result has the ancestry columns, with nothing moved.

Ancestry Rules for Formed Groups

reportMatePairs applies the rules to pairs. reportAncestryViolations applies the same rules to groups that already exist, for example the group element returned by groupAddAssign without its final element, which holds the animals left unused. Give it a list of animal-id vectors, one per group, the pedigree with its ancestry column, and the rules table. It reports every pair inside a group that matches a rule, block and flag rules alike, and a coverage table: for each standardized ancestry level, how many of the grouped animals sit at that level (n) and whether any rule names it (covered). An id that is not in the pedigree stops the function.

formedGroups <- list(c("C1", "I1", "J1"), c("I2", "U1", "H1"))
ancViolations <- reportAncestryViolations(formedGroups, ancPed, ancestryRules)
ancViolations$violations
group id1 id2 ancestry1 ancestry2 rule severity status
1 I1 C1 INDIAN CHINESE CHINESE-INDIAN block violation
2 I2 H1 INDIAN HYBRID HYBRID-INDIAN block violation
2 I2 U1 INDIAN UNKNOWN INDIAN-UNKNOWN flag violation
ancViolations$coverage
ancestry n covered
CHINESE 1 TRUE
INDIAN 2 TRUE
HYBRID 1 TRUE
JAPANESE 1 FALSE
OTHER 0 TRUE
UNKNOWN 1 TRUE

Each row of violations gives the group (its position in the list), the two animals and their levels, the matched rule, its severity and its status. The first group also holds a Japanese animal. No rule names that level (covered is FALSE), so that animal appears in no violation; the coverage table is there so that this silence is visible.

A rule named in overriddenRules (a data frame that gives the two ancestry levels of the rule, in either order and in any case) still reports its pairs, with the status "overridden" in place of "violation", so nothing is dropped silently. A row that matches no rule in the rules table is an error, so a typo cannot override nothing.

ancViolationsOverridden <- reportAncestryViolations(
  formedGroups, ancPed, ancestryRules,
  overriddenRules = data.frame(ancestry1 = "CHINESE", ancestry2 = "INDIAN"))
ancViolationsOverridden$violations
group id1 id2 ancestry1 ancestry2 rule severity status
1 I1 C1 INDIAN CHINESE CHINESE-INDIAN block overridden
2 I2 H1 INDIAN HYBRID HYBRID-INDIAN block violation
2 I2 U1 INDIAN UNKNOWN INDIAN-UNKNOWN flag violation

Pedigree Errors

As stated earlier you can see which types of errors are detected by qcStudbook by looking at names returned by getEmptyErrorLst() as shown below.

names(getEmptyErrorLst())
##  [1] "failedDatabaseConnection" "missingColumns"          
##  [3] "invalidDateRows"          "suspiciousParents"       
##  [5] "femaleSires"              "maleDams"                
##  [7] "sireAndDam"               "duplicateIds"            
##  [9] "invalidIdChars"           "invalidPlaceholderRows"  
## [11] "changedCols"

Each is defined below.

Error Definition
failedDatabaseConnection Database connection failed: configuration or permissions are invalid
missingColumns Columns that must be within the pedigree file are missing.
invalidDateRows Values, which are supposed to be dates, cannot be interpreted as a date.
suspiciousParents Parents were too young on the date of birth of the offspring to have been the parent.
femaleSires Individuals listed as female and as a sire.
maleDams Individuals are listed as male and as a dam.
sireAndDam Individuals who are listed as both a sire and a dam.
duplicateIds IDs listed more than once.
invalidIdChars IDs (id, sire, or dam) that contain a period (‘.’), which is not allowed.
invalidPlaceholderRows Rows with a placeholder value other than TRUE, FALSE, 1, 0 or blank (the optional column that marks stand-ins for unknown parents).
changedCols Columns that have been changed to conform to internal naming conventions and what they were changed to.

We are going to use the small imaginary pedigree listed below that has multiple errors to discuss pedigree error detection and reporting. First note the birth dates of ego_id o4 (2006-04-13) and the purported sire s2 (2006-06-19). Note also the purported birth date of the d2 and the birth dates of her offspring. Obviously dates or IDs may be incorrect.

This is the pedigree. (We will discuss the column names shortly.)

knitr::kable(nprcgenekeepr::pedOne)
ego_id sire.id dam_id sex birth_date
s1 NA NA F 2000-07-18
d1 NA NA M 2003-04-13
s2 NA NA M 2006-06-19
d2 NA NA F 2015-09-16
o1 s1 d1 F 2015-02-04
o2 s1 d2 F 2009-03-17
o3 s2 d2 F 2012-04-11
o4 s2 d2 M 2006-04-13

If we try to convert this pedigree file into the standardized studbook format, we are going to get an error message and the creation of a file in the R sessions temporary directory that lists the records that have generated the errors.

pedOne <- nprcgenekeepr::pedOne # put it in the local environment
ped <- qcStudbook(pedOne, minSireAge = 0.0, minDamAge = 0.0)
## Error in `qcStudbook()`:
## ! Parents with low age at birth of offspring are listed in /var/folders/dg/yk5mzc3n7jj8dfhdj7wspyy80000gn/T//Rtmpjv33we/lowParentAge.csv.

The contents of lowParentAge.csv is shown below.

dam sire id sex birth recordStatus placeholder exit sireBirth damBirth sireAge damAge
d2 s1 o2 F 2009-03-17 original FALSE NA 2000-07-18 2015-09-16 8.66 -6.50
d2 s2 o3 F 2012-04-11 original FALSE NA 2006-06-19 2015-09-16 5.81 -3.43
d2 s2 o4 M 2006-04-13 original FALSE NA 2006-06-19 2015-09-16 -0.18 -9.43

Examination of the ages of the parents reveals the issues being reported.

We can remove the errors by changing the birth dates of o4 from 2006-04-13 to 2015-09-16 and of d2 from 2015-09-16 to 2006-04-13.

pedOne$birth_date[pedOne$ego_id == "o4"] <- as.Date("2015-09-16")
pedOne$birth_date[pedOne$ego_id == "d2"] <- as.Date("2006-04-13")

Note the changes made to the column names between the original pedOne pedigree and the pedigree (ped) we get from qcStudbook. We have chosen to limit the displayed pedigree by selecting the ego_id’s and id’s in pedOne and ped respectively.

ped <- qcStudbook(pedOne, minSireAge = 0.0, minDamAge = 0.0)
ped[ped$id %in% c("s2", "d2", "o3", "o4"), ]
id sire dam sex gen birth exit age recordStatus placeholder
2 d2 NA NA F 0 2006-04-13 NA 20.6 original FALSE
4 s2 NA NA M 0 2006-06-19 NA 20.4 original FALSE
7 o3 s2 d2 F 1 2012-04-11 NA 14.6 original FALSE
8 o4 s2 d2 M 1 2015-09-16 NA 11.1 original FALSE

However, the preferred method of creating the standardized studbook format with qcStudbook is to examine all errors found and correcting them before proceeding. This is done by explicitly requesting that all aspects inconsistent with the studbook format be identified by setting reportChanges and reportErrors to .

errorList <- qcStudbook(pedOne,
  minSireAge = 0.0, minDamAge = 0.0, reportChanges = TRUE,
  reportErrors = TRUE
)
summary(errorList)
## Error: The animal listed as a sire and also listed as a female is: s1.
## Error: The animal listed as a dam and also listed as a male is: d1.
## Change: The column where period was removed is: sire.id to sireid.
## Change: The columns where underscore was removed are: ego_id, dam_id, and birth_date to egoid, damid, and birthdate.
## Change: The column changed from: egoid to id.
## Change: The column changed from: sireid to sire.
## Change: The column changed from: damid to dam.
## Change: The column changed from: birthdate to birth.
## 
## Please check and correct the pedigree file.
## 

We will discuss each of these newly identified errors in a moment, however, let’s look at shortening this report, because often you will not be interested in the more trivial changes to the column names made by qcStudbook and in those cases you simply choose not to report changes to the column names as is shown here by setting reportChanges to . For this illustration, we are going to bring back the original copy of pedOne to see how the suspicious parents are reported by the summary function.

pedOne <- nprcgenekeepr::pedOne
errorList <- qcStudbook(pedOne,
  minSireAge = 0L, minDamAge = 0L, reportChanges = FALSE,
  reportErrors = TRUE
)
options(width = 90L)
summary(errorList)
## Error: The animal listed as a sire and also listed as a female is: s1.
## Error: The animal listed as a dam and also listed as a male is: d1.
## 
## Please check and correct the pedigree file.
##  
## Animal records where parent records are suspicious because of dates.
## One or more parents appear too young at time of birth.
##   dam sire id sex      birth recordStatus placeholder exit  sireBirth   damBirth sireAge
## 2  d2   s1 o2   F 2009-03-17     original       FALSE <NA> 2000-07-18 2015-09-16    8.66
## 3  d2   s2 o3   F 2012-04-11     original       FALSE <NA> 2006-06-19 2015-09-16    5.81
## 4  d2   s2 o4   M 2006-04-13     original       FALSE <NA> 2006-06-19 2015-09-16   -0.18
##   damAge
## 2   -6.5
## 3   -3.4
## 4   -9.4

The first two errors mentioned are of particular interest. Currently qcStudbook automatically changes the sex of dams to F (female) and sires to M (male) when reportErrors is set to .

Genetic Loops

This feature is not supported within the Shiny application and is not fully implemented.

To use the findLoops function run the following code on a pedigree that has a loop in it. We are continuing to use the example pedigree that comes with the software, ExamplePedigree.csv, which is held in memory as breederPed.

exampleTree <- createPedTree(breederPed)
exampleLoops <- findLoops(exampleTree)

You can count the animals checked, the animals that are in loops, and the total of the per-animal loop counts returned by countLoops with the following code.

cat("Animals checked:", length(exampleLoops), "\n")
## Animals checked: 3694
cat("Animals in loops:", sum(unlist(exampleLoops)), "\n")
## Animals in loops: 145
nLoops <- countLoops(exampleLoops, exampleTree)
cat("Total of per-animal loop counts:", sum(unlist(nLoops[nLoops > 0L])), "\n")
## Total of per-animal loop counts: 258

You can list the first 10 sets of ids, sires and dams in loops with the following line of code:

loopIds <- names(exampleLoops)[unlist(exampleLoops)]
breederPed[match(loopIds, breederPed$id), c("id", "sire", "dam")][1L:10L, ]
id sire dam
2519 MRC4BF 7ZEGLB L1VRM7
2572 SZ05LQ 7ZEGLB 4H5RS1
2695 6FDURN B2CKHA L1VRM7
2722 BWM2Z2 B2CKHA 4Y8JHT
2752 EZ2F8A 7ZEGLB DCJJYS
2755 FAPEMV 7ZEGLB 2SIP77
2905 X4UZJS B2CKHA L1VRM7
2922 ZQFCR5 7ZEGLB DCJJYS
2924 027TLR TR5L57 TEACA3
2941 1EXT8T TR5L57 ZPS15A

Shrinking a Pedigree to a Genotyping Budget

trimPedigree cuts a pedigree down around the focal animals you name. shrinkPedigree answers a different question: given which animals are genotyped, which animals can be dropped and still leave a pedigree that is informative within a genotyping-cost budget? It works on this package’s pedigree data frame (the id, sire and dam columns). The budget, maxBits, limits the pedigree’s bit size, which is twice the number of non-founders less the number of founders. Three trims are applied in order:

The optional affected vector marks the animals that show the trait you care about; without it every animal counts as unaffected. genotyped is a logical vector with one value per row of the pedigree, NA not allowed. Suppose only the animals still living, those with no exit date, are genotyped:

genotyped <- is.na(qcPed$exit)
shrinkResult <- shrinkPedigree(qcPed[, c("id", "sire", "dam")], genotyped)
unlist(shrinkResult[c("pedSizeOriginal", "pedSizeIntermed", "pedSizeFinal")])
## pedSizeOriginal pedSizeIntermed    pedSizeFinal 
##             280             258              44
lengths(shrinkResult$idList)
##   unavail noninform  affected 
##        19         3       214

The 280 animals of qcPed shrink to 258 after the first two trims and 44 at the end. idList groups the removed ids by the trim that took them: unavail, noninform and affected. idTrimmed lists every removed id in the order of removal, and bitSize records the bit size before any trimming, after the first two trims, and after each round of the third. The default maxBits is 16; a smaller budget asks the third trim to go further.

shrinkResultSmall <- shrinkPedigree(qcPed[, c("id", "sire", "dam")], genotyped,
                                    maxBits = 8L)
c(default = nrow(shrinkResult$ped), smaller = nrow(shrinkResultSmall$ped))
## default smaller 
##      44      20

The smaller budget leaves 20 animals in place of 44.

Marker Genetics

Everything up to this point has estimated kinship and diversity from a recorded pedigree – kinship, reportGV, and the rest all assume the sire/dam relationships in your pedigree data are correct. The functions in this section instead estimate relatedness, heterozygosity, parentage consistency, and between-center differentiation directly from a marker genotype panel (e.g. a SNP or STR panel), independent of any known pedigree. This is the same functionality behind the Shiny application’s Marker Genetics tab – see the “Marker Genetics” section of the colony-manager-guide article for the equivalent point-and-click workflow and screenshots. Several of the small example genotypes below (kinship, heterozygosity, exclusion, and Fst) match the ones used there, so those numbers are the same ones shown in that article’s tables; the candidate-parent likelihood example here differs from the article’s.

Preparing a Marker Genotype File

A marker genotype file is long-format: one row per id x locus, with columns id, locus, allele1, and allele2. (This is a different shape from the single-locus first_name/second_name genotype format used earlier by addGenotype/geneDrop – the two are unrelated.) You would normally read this from a CSV file with read.csv, the same way the pedigree file was read in at the start of this tutorial; here we build a small example directly, for a parent (P), her offspring (C), and an unrelated founder (U), genotyped at 10 biallelic loci.

markerGenotype <- data.frame(
  id = c(rep("P", 10L), rep("C", 10L), rep("U", 10L)),
  locus = rep(paste0("L", 1L:10L), 3L),
  allele1 = c(
    "A", "A", "A", "B", "A", "A", "B", "A", "A", "A",
    "A", "A", "B", "A", "A", "A", "B", "A", "A", "A",
    "A", "B", "A", "A", "A", "A", "A", "B", "A", "B"
  ),
  allele2 = c(
    "A", "B", "B", "B", "A", "B", "B", "B", "A", "B",
    "B", "A", "B", "B", "A", "B", "B", "B", "B", "A",
    "B", "B", "A", "B", "B", "A", "B", "B", "B", "B"
  ),
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)

checkMarkerGenotypeFile validates the column shape, rejects any locus with more than two distinct alleles (the estimators below all require biallelic markers), and stops on duplicate id x locus rows. buildMarkerGenotypeMatrix then pivots the checked long-format table into the wide id x locus matrix the rest of this section’s functions consume, one cell per individual/locus combination (e.g. "A/B"), or NA where that individual has no genotype call at that locus.

markerGenotype <- checkMarkerGenotypeFile(markerGenotype)
genotypeMatrix <- buildMarkerGenotypeMatrix(markerGenotype)
genotypeMatrix
##   L1    L2    L3    L4    L5    L6    L7    L8    L9    L10  
## P "A/A" "A/B" "A/B" "B/B" "A/A" "A/B" "B/B" "A/B" "A/A" "A/B"
## C "A/B" "A/A" "B/B" "A/B" "A/A" "A/B" "B/B" "A/B" "A/B" "A/A"
## U "A/B" "B/B" "A/A" "A/B" "A/B" "A/A" "A/B" "B/B" "A/B" "B/B"

Marker-Based Kinship

markerKinship estimates pairwise kinship directly from genotypeMatrix, using the “KING-robust” estimator (Manichaikul et al. 2010) – the same estimator implemented by KING, PLINK2, and SNPRelate::snpgdsIBDKING. It never looks at recorded parentage, so it is useful as an independent cross-check on the pedigree-based kinship computed by kinship/reportGV above.

markerKmat <- markerKinship(genotypeMatrix)
markerKmat
##     P    C    U
## P 0.5  0.2  0.0
## C 0.2  0.5 -0.3
## U 0.0 -0.3  0.5

P and C are the true parent/offspring pair in this example, and their marker-based kinship (0.2) is clearly higher than either pair involving the unrelated founder U. The KING-robust estimator is not bounded below by zero – C and U’s negative estimate here is informative (more divergent ancestry than the reference panel), not an error.

Heterozygosity Diagnostic

markerObservedHeterozygosity computes, per animal, the fraction of its genotyped loci at which it is heterozygous (Ho). markerExpectedHeterozygosity computes Nei’s (1973) gene diversity (He) at each locus from the population’s allele frequencies, plus the unweighted mean across loci as a population-wide summary – the standard observed-vs-expected heterozygosity diagnostic. Both take the same genotypeMatrix shape as markerKinship. This example uses three animals (X, Y, Z) genotyped at 4 loci, with Y missing a call at L4.

hetGenotype <- data.frame(
  id = c(rep("X", 4L), rep("Y", 3L), rep("Z", 4L)),
  locus = c(paste0("L", 1L:4L), paste0("L", c(1L, 2L, 3L)), paste0("L", 1L:4L)),
  allele1 = c("A", "A", "A", "A", "A", "A", "B", "B", "A", "A", "A"),
  allele2 = c("A", "B", "B", "B", "B", "A", "B", "B", "A", "B", "A"),
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)
hetGenotype <- checkMarkerGenotypeFile(hetGenotype)
hetMatrix <- buildMarkerGenotypeMatrix(hetGenotype)
markerObservedHeterozygosity(hetMatrix)
##         X         Y         Z 
## 0.7500000 0.3333333 0.2500000
markerExpectedHeterozygosity(hetMatrix)
## $perLocus
##        L1        L2        L3        L4 
## 0.5000000 0.2777778 0.4444444 0.3750000 
## 
## $meanHe
## [1] 0.3993056

Note Y’s observed heterozygosity is computed over its own 3 genotyped loci (1/3), not over all 4 – a missing call at one locus does not lower an animal’s own Ho, since the denominator is always that animal’s own non-missing loci, not the full panel.

Parentage Verification (Mendelian Exclusion)

markerParentageExclusion cross-references a pedigree’s recorded dam/sire against each animal’s marker genotype and flags a recorded parent whose genotype evidence contradicts simple Mendelian inheritance – directly useful for catching the kind of dam/sire misidentification a paper pedigree alone cannot reveal. A locus counts as a conflict only when the animal and the candidate parent are each homozygous for a different allele (“opposite homozygotes”); by default (maxExclusions = 2) a recorded parent is only flagged once 3 or more such conflicts accumulate, since a single mismatching locus can arise from ordinary genotyping error even for a true parent.

We reuse the P/C/U genotypeMatrix from above, with a pedigree in which C’s recorded dam (P) is correct, but C’s recorded sire has been (deliberately, for this example) misrecorded as the unrelated U.

pedigree <- data.frame(id = c("P", "C", "U"), sire = c(NA, "U", NA),
                        dam = c(NA, "P", NA), stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
markerParentageExclusion(genotypeMatrix, pedigree)
id parentId role exclusionCount nLoci flagged
C P dam 0 10 FALSE
C U sire 3 10 TRUE

C’s true dam (P) has zero exclusions and is not flagged; C’s falsely recorded sire (U) has 3 exclusions, exceeding the default maxExclusions = 2, and is correctly flagged.

Candidate-Parent Likelihood Ranking

Once markerParentageExclusion has flagged a recorded parent as Mendelian-inconsistent with its offspring’s genotype, markerParentageLikelihood picks up the investigation: it ranks candidate replacement parents using a CERVUS-style multilocus likelihood-ratio (LOD) score (Meagher & Thompson 1986; Marshall, Slate, Kruuk & Pemberton 1998), the same approach independently validated in a real captive macaque colony by de Groot et al. (2025). It is deliberately report-only – it never rewrites pedigree\(sire_/_pedigree\)dam; a flagged parent is a curator decision, not something to silently overwrite. Candidates default to getPotentialParents’s own demographically -eligible list (breeding age, gestation window, proven-breeder preference) for the flagged offspring/role, or can be supplied explicitly, as below.

likelihoodGenotype <- data.frame(
  id = c("O", "O", "D", "D", "C1", "C1", "C2", "C2"),
  locus = c("L1", "L2", "L1", "L2", "L1", "L2", "L1", "L2"),
  allele1 = c("A", "A", "A", "A", "A", "A", "B", "B"),
  allele2 = c("A", "B", "B", "A", "A", "B", "B", "B"),
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)
likelihoodMatrix <- buildMarkerGenotypeMatrix(likelihoodGenotype)
likelihoodPed <- data.frame(id = "O", sire = "C2", dam = "D",
                             stringsAsFactors = FALSE)

O is the offspring, recorded dam D, recorded sire C2; C1 is an unrecorded candidate. markerParentageExclusion first shows why C2 is worth a second look:

markerParentageExclusion(likelihoodMatrix, likelihoodPed)
id parentId role exclusionCount nLoci flagged
O D dam 0 2 FALSE
O C2 sire 1 2 FALSE

C2’s single exclusion (of 2 loci) falls within the default maxExclusions = 2 tolerance, so it is not flagged here – but 1 conflicting locus is still worth ranking against alternatives:

markerParentageLikelihood(likelihoodMatrix, likelihoodPed, id = "O",
                           role = "sire", candidates = c("C1", "C2"),
                           minLoci = 1L)
id role candidateId LOD delta nLociUsed excluded lowPower
O sire C1 0.4700036 Inf 2 FALSE FALSE
O sire C2 -Inf NA 2 FALSE FALSE

C1 – genetically identical to O at both loci – decisively outranks the recorded sire C2 (LOD 0.47 vs -Inf). Notice C2’s excluded column is FALSE (the same tolerant test as above) even though its LOD is -Inf: a single opposite-homozygote locus (C2 is B/B at L1, where O is A/A) is a zero-tolerance Mendelian impossibility under the likelihood model, with no allowance for ordinary genotyping error the way the exclusion count is. delta for C1 is Inf, not a large finite number – the gap down to a -Inf-ranked neighbor is reported as infinite, by design.

Validating a Cross-Center Mapping

When an animal transfers between centers that use independent id namespaces, the receiving center often has no way to know the animal’s real parents and records it as an artificial founder – losing its actual lineage even though the originating center’s records still have it. resolveCrossCenterIds (next) fixes this by merging two centers’ pedigrees given a curator-confirmed id mapping, but it stop()s on the first problem it finds in that mapping. checkCrossCenterMapping shares the same validation logic but never stops early – it returns every problem found as a row in a data.frame, so a curator sees everything wrong with a mapping in one call rather than a stop-fix-rerun cycle, one problem at a time.

In this example, T1 (in Center A’s pedigree, pedA) and X9 (in Center B’s pedigree, pedB) are the same physical animal – Center B recorded it as a founder (both parents NA) because it never knew T1’s real parents, which Center A does have.

pedA <- data.frame(
  id = c("P1", "P2", "T1"), sire = c(NA, NA, "P1"), dam = c(NA, NA, "P2"),
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)
pedB <- data.frame(
  id = c("X9", "O1"), sire = c(NA, "X9"), dam = c(NA, NA),
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)
mapping <- data.frame(idA = "T1", idB = "X9", stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
checkCrossCenterMapping(pedA, pedB, mapping)
type ids message

Zero rows means the mapping is clean – resolveCrossCenterIds can be called on the same three inputs without error, as it is below. A mapping with real problems (here, idB "X9" mapped twice, and an idA value "NOPE" that doesn’t exist in pedA) instead reports both problems at once, rather than only the first:

badMapping <- data.frame(idA = c("T1", "NOPE"), idB = c("X9", "X9"),
                          stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
checkCrossCenterMapping(pedA, pedB, badMapping)
type ids message
uniqueness X9 Duplicate idB value(s) in mapping: X9.
existence NOPE mapping references idA value(s) not present in pedA$id: NOPE.

One subtlety: a genuine undeclared id collision between the two centers (an id present in both pedA and pedB but never named in mapping) is only ever reported once the existence and uniqueness problems above are already clean – a collision check on a mapping that doesn’t resolve to real pedigree rows would be meaningless. The same second check also reports a pedB animal whose id mapping already gives to a different pedA animal (a "mappedIdClash" row), and a mapped pair whose recorded parents conflict. A clean result from this function is what licenses trusting the absence of a collision, not merely the absence of a "collision" row in a dirty one.

Cross-Center Identity Linking

With the mapping validated above, resolveCrossCenterIds merges the two centers’ pedigrees into one, preferring whichever side actually recorded a parent.

resolveCrossCenterIds(pedA, pedB, mapping)
id sire dam
P1 NA NA
P2 NA NA
T1 P1 P2
O1 T1 NA

The merged pedigree has a single row for T1 with its real parents (P1, P2) intact, and O1 – recorded at Center B as X9’s offspring – now correctly points to T1 as its sire.

Cross-Center Differentiation (Fst)

markerFst takes a different, population-level view: rather than linking individual animals across centers, it estimates Hudson’s Fst (Hudson, Slatkin & Maddison 1992, as given in closed form by Bhatia et al. 2013) – how differentiated two centers’ colonies are in allele frequency, at each locus genotyped by both, plus a single pooled summary across loci. The pooled value is a ratio of summed numerators and denominators, not a mean of the per-locus ratios, which Bhatia et al. show is materially biased.

centerAGenotype <- data.frame(
  id = c(rep("CA1", 2L), rep("CA2", 2L), rep("CA3", 2L), rep("CA4", 2L)),
  locus = rep(c("L1", "L2"), 4L),
  allele1 = c("A", "A", "A", "A", "A", "A", "B", "A"),
  allele2 = c("A", "A", "A", "B", "B", "B", "B", "A"),
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)
centerBGenotype <- data.frame(
  id = c(rep("CB1", 2L), rep("CB2", 2L), rep("CB3", 2L),
         rep("CB4", 2L), rep("CB5", 2L), rep("CB6", 2L)),
  locus = rep(c("L1", "L2"), 6L),
  allele1 = c("A", "B", "B", "A", "A", "B", "B", "B", "A", "B", "B", "A"),
  allele2 = c("B", "B", "B", "B", "B", "B", "B", "B", "A", "B", "B", "B"),
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)
matrixA <- buildMarkerGenotypeMatrix(checkMarkerGenotypeFile(centerAGenotype))
matrixB <- buildMarkerGenotypeMatrix(checkMarkerGenotypeFile(centerBGenotype))
markerFst(matrixA, matrixB)
## $perLocus
##         L1         L2 
## 0.05794206 0.45129870 
## 
## $pooledFst
## [1] 0.2749664

L2 shows substantially more differentiation between the two centers than L1 does in this example; the pooled value summarizes both loci into one number for a quick between-center comparison.

Multiallelic Marker Panels and Locus Metadata

Everything above assumed a biallelic panel – checkMarkerGenotypeFile rejects any locus with more than two distinct alleles, since the KING-robust kinship estimator requires it. Real microsatellite/STR panels are routinely multiallelic, though, so the package provides a second, more permissive validator for the linkage-aware metrics below: checkLinkageMarkerGenotypeFile keeps the same structural checks (column shape, no duplicate id x locus rows) but drops the biallelic restriction.

strGenotype <- data.frame(
  id = c("W", "X", "Y", "Z"),
  locus = c("L1", "L1", "L1", "L1"),
  allele1 = c("A", "A", "A", "A"),
  allele2 = c("B", "C", "A", "D"),
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)

This locus has 4 distinct alleles (A, B, C, D) across the four animals – checkLinkageMarkerGenotypeFile accepts it:

checkLinkageMarkerGenotypeFile(strGenotype)
id locus allele1 allele2
W L1 A B
X L1 A C
Y L1 A A
Z L1 A D

The same data fed to checkMarkerGenotypeFile instead fails, exactly as that function is designed to:

checkMarkerGenotypeFile(strGenotype)
## Error in `checkMarkerGenotypeFile()`:
## ! Marker genotype file has one or more loci with more than two distinct alleles (the KING-robust estimator requires biallelic markers): L1.

The metrics below also need per-locus genomic position information, which real curated panels rarely have complete records for. checkLocusMetadata validates a locus/chrom/pos (optionally cM) sidecar table and classifies each locus’s own coverage as "full" (chromosome and position both known), "partial" (one of the two), or "none" (neither) – downstream functions then decide for themselves which loci they can use, rather than requiring complete metadata up front.

locusMetadata <- data.frame(
  locus = c("L1", "L2", "L3"),
  chrom = c("1", "1", NA),
  pos   = c(1000000, NA, NA),
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)
checkLocusMetadata(locusMetadata)
locus chrom pos coverage
L1 1 1e+06 full
L2 1 NA partial
L3 NA NA none

L1 has both chromosome and position and is "full"; L2 has only a chromosome ("partial"); L3 has neither ("none"). computeGenomicROH (the F_ROH tab’s estimator) uses only "full"-coverage loci and drops the rest with a named warning; markerLdBlock below needs only chrom and tolerates a missing pos/cM entirely.

Realized Relatedness Variance

Pedigree-expected relatedness (kinship doubled) is only an average – actual IBD sharing between two relatives varies around that expectation because of Mendelian sampling and linkage. markerRealizedRelatednessVariance computes a closed-form estimate of that variance (Hill & Weir 2011) for Parent-Offspring, Full-Sibling, and Half-Sibling pairs, and lists only those pairs. Despite the “marker” name shared with the rest of this section, it needs no genotype data at all – only a kinship matrix, the pedigree, and the species’ chromosome count and total autosomal genetic map length (in Morgans).

smallPed <- nprcgenekeepr::smallPed
smallPed$gen <- findGeneration(smallPed$id, smallPed$sire, smallPed$dam)
smallPedKmat <- kinship(smallPed$id, smallPed$sire, smallPed$dam, smallPed$gen,
                         sparse = FALSE)
## Rhesus macaque autosome count/map length are used here only as an
## example scale -- supply values appropriate to your own species.
rrv <- markerRealizedRelatednessVariance(smallPedKmat, smallPed, nChr = 20L,
                                          mapLength = 28)
rrv
id1 id2 kinship relation R varR sdR
3 A C 0.250 Parent-Offspring 0.50 0.0000000 0.0000000
4 A D 0.250 Parent-Offspring 0.50 0.0000000 0.0000000
8 A H 0.250 Parent-Offspring 0.50 0.0000000 0.0000000
9 A I 0.250 Parent-Offspring 0.50 0.0000000 0.0000000
13 A M 0.250 Parent-Offspring 0.50 0.0000000 0.0000000
17 A Q 0.250 Parent-Offspring 0.50 0.0000000 0.0000000
20 B C 0.250 Parent-Offspring 0.50 0.0000000 0.0000000
21 B D 0.250 Parent-Offspring 0.50 0.0000000 0.0000000
25 B H 0.250 Parent-Offspring 0.50 0.0000000 0.0000000
38 C D 0.250 Full-Siblings 0.50 0.0018350 0.0428371
42 C H 0.250 Full-Siblings 0.50 0.0018350 0.0428371
43 C I 0.125 Half-Siblings 0.25 0.0009175 0.0302904
46 C L 0.250 Parent-Offspring 0.50 0.0000000 0.0000000
47 C M 0.125 Half-Siblings 0.25 0.0009175 0.0302904
57 D F 0.250 Parent-Offspring 0.50 0.0000000 0.0000000
58 D G 0.250 Parent-Offspring 0.50 0.0000000 0.0000000
59 D H 0.250 Full-Siblings 0.50 0.0018350 0.0428371
60 D I 0.125 Half-Siblings 0.25 0.0009175 0.0302904
64 D M 0.125 Half-Siblings 0.25 0.0009175 0.0302904
74 E F 0.250 Parent-Offspring 0.50 0.0000000 0.0000000
75 E G 0.250 Parent-Offspring 0.50 0.0000000 0.0000000
92 F G 0.250 Full-Siblings 0.50 0.0018350 0.0428371
128 H I 0.125 Half-Siblings 0.25 0.0009175 0.0302904
132 H M 0.125 Half-Siblings 0.25 0.0009175 0.0302904
146 I J 0.250 Parent-Offspring 0.50 0.0000000 0.0000000
149 I M 0.125 Half-Siblings 0.25 0.0009175 0.0302904
182 K L 0.250 Parent-Offspring 0.50 0.0000000 0.0000000
218 M N 0.250 Parent-Offspring 0.50 0.0000000 0.0000000
220 M P 0.250 Parent-Offspring 0.50 0.0000000 0.0000000
254 O P 0.250 Parent-Offspring 0.50 0.0000000 0.0000000

Parent-offspring pairs have varR of exactly zero, not merely small – biologically, exactly one allele at every locus is always IBD between a parent and its offspring, so there is no variance to estimate around the R = 0.5 expectation. Full-sibling variance is roughly double half -sibling variance in this example (two independently segregating parents vs. one), a useful sanity check when interpreting the estimate for your own pedigree.

Linkage-Disequilibrium Blocks

markerLdBlock takes a different, more classical view of marker relationships: pairwise linkage disequilibrium (LD) between loci sharing a chromosome, using Hedrick’s (1987) frequency-weighted D’ and a multiallelic r² generalization, from phase frequencies estimated by an EM algorithm (generalizing Excoffier & Slatkin 1995) since this package’s genotype matrix is unphased. It is explicitly the secondary, exploratory statistic in a pair with markerRealizedRelatednessVariance above – classical LD theory assumes random mating, which a pedigreed colony violates, so every row of its output carries a fixed caveat saying so.

ldGenotype <- checkLinkageMarkerGenotypeFile(data.frame(
  id = rep(c("W", "X", "Y", "Z"), 2),
  locus = rep(c("L1", "L2"), each = 4),
  allele1 = c("A", "A", "A", "A", "M", "M", "N", "N"),
  allele2 = c("A", "B", "A", "B", "M", "N", "M", "N"),
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
))
ldGenotypeMatrix <- buildMarkerGenotypeMatrix(ldGenotype)
ldLocusMetadata <- checkLocusMetadata(data.frame(
  locus = c("L1", "L2"), chrom = c("1", "1"), pos = c(NA, NA),
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
))
markerLdBlock(ldGenotypeMatrix, ldLocusMetadata)
locus1 locus2 chrom Dprime r2 nUsed idsUsed caveat
L1 L2 1 1 0.3333333 4 NA Descriptive statistic only – not a rigorous, pedigree-aware LD-block measure. Classical linkage-disequilibrium theory assumes random mating, which a pedigreed colony violates; prefer markerRealizedRelatednessVariance() for pedigree-valid estimates.

D’ = 1 (the maximum possible) in this toy example – only X is a double heterozygote at both loci (the only source of phase ambiguity here), and the EM estimator resolves it to a fully-consistent phase assignment. Note r² (1/3) does not move in lockstep with D’ here – the two statistics capture different aspects of the same association, and needn’t agree.

De-identifying LD-Block Results

markerLdBlock’s own output is a locus-pair-level population statistic with no per-individual ids in it – except idsUsed, populated only when founderIds restricts the computation to a named subset. That is the one place a real id can leak, and obfuscateLdBlocks closes it: it remaps idsUsed through the same alias vector obfuscatePed’s map output produces, mirroring obfuscateTwinRelations’s existing pattern from elsewhere in the package’s de-identification family. A row whose idsUsed contains an id absent from the map stop()s loudly rather than silently leaking it.

ldBlockResult <- data.frame(
  locus1 = "L1", locus2 = "L2", chrom = "1", Dprime = 0.5, r2 = 0.3,
  nUsed = 2L, idsUsed = "F1,F2", caveat = "Descriptive statistic only.",
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)
obfuscatedTwinPed <- obfuscatePed(twinPed[, c("id", "sire", "dam", "sex", "gen")],
                                   map = TRUE)
obfuscateLdBlocks(ldBlockResult, obfuscatedTwinPed$map)
locus1 locus2 chrom Dprime r2 nUsed idsUsed caveat
L1 L2 1 0.5 0.3 2 23M4TN,6ZYRB6 Descriptive statistic only.

The real ids F1/F2 (reusing the twin-pedigree ids from the Pedigree Diagram section above) no longer appear in idsUsed – every other column (the statistics themselves) is untouched. The exact alias strings are randomly generated on every call and are not reproduced here; what matters is that no real id from the input survives into the de-identified table.

Aliasing Ids with a Known Placeholder Status

obfuscateId gives each id a random alias. By default it reads an id’s shape to decide whether it stands for an unknown parent: an id like "U0007" gets a placeholder-shaped alias (the placeholder prefix plus random characters) and every other id gets a plain one. That guess is wrong for a real animal that happens to be named "U1234". qcStudbook records the truth in a placeholder column, and obfuscateId’s placeholder argument takes that information, one logical value per id: TRUE for a placeholder and FALSE for a real animal. NA (or leaving the argument out) reads that id by its shape.

The aliases are random; the seed is fixed here only so the printed values are reproducible.

ids <- c("U1234", "A100", "U0007", "B200")
isPlaceholder <- c(FALSE, FALSE, TRUE, FALSE)
set.seed(1)
obfuscateId(ids, size = 6L)
##    U1234     A100    U0007     B200 
## "UJNV6H" "68YXCH" "UGZN1S" "09N27H"
set.seed(1)
obfuscateId(ids, size = 6L, placeholder = isPlaceholder)
##    U1234     A100    U0007     B200 
## "JNV6H6" "8YXCHG" "UZN1S0" "9N27HX"

The first call reads U1234 by its shape and gives it a placeholder-shaped alias, so the real animal looks like an unknown parent after de-identification. The second call marks it real, so it gets a plain alias (random, so it could begin with U by chance; with this seed it does not), while U0007, marked TRUE, keeps a placeholder-shaped one. The argument must be logical and the same length as id, or the call stops.

MHC Haplotype Reporting

The MHC Haplotype Reporting tab of the Shiny application has four counterparts for scripts. The input is a wide table with one row for each animal: the animal’s id, then its two haplotype designations. checkMhcHaplotypeFile checks that structure (exactly three columns, the first an id, and one row for each animal) and gives the columns fixed names whatever the file called them; the example data set rhesusGenotypes calls the designation columns first_name and second_name. A designation is an opaque label: it is never split or compared with MHC region names. A trailing ? marks an uncertain call, and an empty cell is a missing one.

mhcChecked <- checkMhcHaplotypeFile(rhesusGenotypes)
names(rhesusGenotypes)
## [1] "id"          "first_name"  "second_name"
names(mhcChecked)
## [1] "id"         "haplotype1" "haplotype2"
head(mhcChecked, 3L)
id haplotype1 haplotype2
I67LRJ A004_B002 A004_B048a
K0M2RD A004_B012b A008_B017a
ZPVN1V A008_B015b A002a_B069a

mhcHaplotypeFrequency summarizes the table. The frequency of a haplotype is its number of copies among the certain calls: twice the animals, less the missing and the uncertain calls. Uncertain calls are left out of the copy counts, the carrier counts and the frequencies, but they are never hidden: nUncertain gives them for each haplotype and the counts table for the file as a whole. A haplotype is flagged rare (isRare) when its frequency is at or below rareFrequencyThreshold, default 0.01, or its carrier count is at or below rareCarrierThreshold, default 2. Both defaults are working filters, not scientific claims.

mhcFrequency <- mhcHaplotypeFrequency(mhcChecked)
mhcFrequency$counts
nAnimals nCalls nMissing nUncertain denominator
31 62 0 2 60
head(mhcFrequency$summary)
haplotype nCopies nCarriers nUncertain frequency isRare
A001_B001a 3 3 0 0.0500000 FALSE
A002a_B001a 2 2 0 0.0333333 TRUE
A002a_B012b 1 1 0 0.0166667 TRUE
A002a_B015a 1 1 0 0.0166667 TRUE
A002a_B024a 1 1 0 0.0166667 TRUE
A002a_B069a 2 2 0 0.0333333 TRUE

In this colony of 31 animals, 26 of the 33 haplotypes are flagged rare. The smallest frequency, 0.017, is above the frequency threshold, so here only the carrier count can flag a haplotype.

mhcHaplotypeCarriers goes from which haplotypes are rare to which animals carry them: one row for each haplotype and carrying animal. By default it lists only the haplotypes flagged rare; rareOnly = FALSE lists them all. The uncertain column is TRUE when the animal’s only calls of that haplotype are uncertain, a provisional carrier that is listed here but is not counted as a carrier above.

rareCarriers <- mhcHaplotypeCarriers(mhcChecked)
allCarriers <- mhcHaplotypeCarriers(mhcChecked, rareOnly = FALSE)
head(rareCarriers)
haplotype id uncertain
A002a_B001a BNHC69 FALSE
A002a_B001a K93DCQ FALSE
A002a_B012b 6XRGWW FALSE
A002a_B015a 4A4EC5 FALSE
A002a_B024a FHHNGA FALSE
A002a_B069a 7UMJ31 FALSE
c(rare = nrow(rareCarriers), all = nrow(allCarriers))
## rare  all 
##   32   61

A carrier table names real animals, and a paired MHC type can identify an animal on its own. obfuscateMhcHaplotypes replaces the ids in a carrier table with the aliases that obfuscatePed gives the same animals (its map output) and leaves the haplotype labels and the uncertain column unchanged, because a haplotype name is shared nomenclature and not an animal identifier. An id missing from the map stops the call, so a real id cannot slip through.

set.seed(1L)
obfuscated <- obfuscatePed(rhesusPedigree[, c("id", "sire", "dam", "sex")],
                           map = TRUE)
hiddenCarriers <- obfuscateMhcHaplotypes(rareCarriers, obfuscated$map)
head(hiddenCarriers)
haplotype id uncertain
A002a_B001a PA1H96 FALSE
A002a_B001a DY3FSE FALSE
A002a_B012b 7P29L2 FALSE
A002a_B015a 1PHABI FALSE
A002a_B024a T7QPMV FALSE
A002a_B069a 4RBLMI FALSE

The aliases are drawn at random, so the seed fixes them for this document.

elapsed_time <- get_elapsed_time_str(start_time)

The current date and time is 2026-10-31 13:04:11.526169. The processing time for this document was 11 seconds..

sessionInfo()
## R version 4.6.1 (2026-06-24)
## Platform: aarch64-apple-darwin23
## Running under: macOS Golden Gate 27.2
## 
## Matrix products: default
## BLAS:   /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/lib/libRblas.0.dylib 
## LAPACK: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/lib/libRlapack.dylib;  LAPACK version 3.12.1
## 
## Random number generation:
##  RNG:     Mersenne-Twister 
##  Normal:  Inversion 
##  Sample:  Rounding 
##  
## locale:
## [1] C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8
## 
## time zone: America/Chicago
## tzcode source: internal
## 
## attached base packages:
## [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     
## 
## other attached packages:
## [1] nprcgenekeepr_3.0.0 knitr_1.51          ggplot2_4.0.3       stringi_1.8.9      
## 
## loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
##  [1] gtable_0.3.6         anytime_0.3.13       xfun_0.60            bslib_0.11.0        
##  [5] visNetwork_2.1.4     htmlwidgets_1.6.4    quadprog_1.5-8       vctrs_0.7.3         
##  [9] tools_4.6.1          generics_0.1.4       tibble_3.3.1         pkgconfig_2.0.3     
## [13] data.table_1.18.4    checkmate_2.3.4      RColorBrewer_1.1-3   S7_0.2.2            
## [17] readxl_1.5.0         lifecycle_1.0.5      compiler_4.6.1       farver_2.1.2        
## [21] stringr_1.6.0        Rlabkey_3.5.0        httpuv_1.6.17        litedown_0.10       
## [25] htmltools_0.5.9      sass_0.4.10          yaml_2.3.12          htmlTable_2.5.0     
## [29] later_1.4.8          pillar_1.11.1        jquerylib_0.1.4      DT_0.34.0           
## [33] cachem_1.1.0         sessioninfo_1.2.4    mime_0.13            commonmark_2.0.0    
## [37] tidyselect_1.2.1     zip_3.0.2            digest_0.6.39        dplyr_1.2.1         
## [41] labeling_0.4.3       fastmap_1.2.0        grid_4.6.1           cli_3.6.6           
## [45] magrittr_2.0.5       withr_3.0.3          scales_1.4.0         promises_1.5.0      
## [49] backports_1.5.1      plotrix_3.8-14       lubridate_1.9.5      timechange_0.4.0    
## [53] rmarkdown_2.31       lambda.r_1.2.4       httr_1.4.8           otel_0.2.0          
## [57] futile.logger_1.4.9  cellranger_1.1.0     openxlsx_4.2.8.1     shiny_1.14.0        
## [61] evaluate_1.0.5       markdown_2.0         rlang_1.3.0          futile.options_1.0.1
## [65] Rcpp_1.1.2           xtable_1.8-8         glue_1.8.1           formatR_1.14        
## [69] rstudioapi_0.19.0    jsonlite_2.0.0       R6_2.6.1

  1. Setting minDamAge to 3.5 and above will cause an error along with the creation of a file lowParentAge.csv in the session’s temporary directory (tempdir(); the error message prints the path) that will list the parents with low age at the birth of an offspring: two dams in this pedigree were about 3.3 years old at a birth. The sires are all older, so raising minSireAge alone to 3.5 does not trigger the error – exactly the sex-specific control the two floors provide.↩︎

  2. The population column is created and added to the pedigree object if it does not already exist.↩︎

  3. Animals with an unknown birth date, and animals that have left the colony, are not considered in this comparison.↩︎

  4. This pedigree is entirely synthetic – constructed for this tutorial, not drawn from any real colony’s records.↩︎

  5. The Diagram tab’s click-to-navigate behavior (clicking a node narrows the focal-animal selection to it, resolving a duplicate-occurrence click to the real animal and ignoring mating-node clicks) is Shiny-specific – it relies on a live Shiny session to receive the click event – and is therefore not reproduced here.↩︎

  6. These waypoint nodes are internal plumbing needed for the right-angle routing itself, not new diagram content.↩︎