da Silva Santos Anelisie, Trigo Tatiane Campos, de Oliveira Tadeu Gomes, Silveira Leandro, Eizirik Eduardo
Laboratório de Biologia Genômica e Molecular, Escola de Ciências, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.
Setor de Mastozoologia, Museu de Ciências Naturais, Fundação Zoobotânica do Rio Grande do Sul. Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.
Genet Mol Biol. 2018;41(1 suppl 1):273-287. doi: 10.1590/1678-4685-GMB-2017-0079.
The pampas cat is a small felid that occurs in open habitats throughout much of South America. Previous studies have revealed intriguing patterns of morphological differentiation and genetic structure among its populations, as well as molecular evidence for hybridization with the closely related L. tigrinus. Here we report phylogeographic analyses encompassing most of its distribution (focusing particularly on Brazilian specimens, which had been poorly sampled in previous studies), using a novel dataset comprising 2,143 bp of the mitogenome, along with previously reported mtDNA sequences. Our data revealed strong population strutucture and supported a west-to-east colonization process in this species' history. We detected two population expansion events, one older (ca. 200 thousand years ago [kya]) in western South America and another more recent (ca. 60-50 kya) in eastern areas, coinciding with the expansion of savanna environments in Brazil. Analyses including L. tigrinus individuals bearing introgressed mtDNA from L. colocola showed a complete lack of shared haplotypes between species, indicating that their hybridization was ancient. Finally, we observed a close relationship between Brazilian/Uruguayan L. colocola haplotypes and those sampled in L. tigrinus, indicating that their hybridization was likely related to the demographic expansion of L. colocola into eastern South America.
潘帕斯猫是一种小型猫科动物，分布于南美洲大部分开阔栖息地。此前的研究揭示了其种群间有趣的形态分化模式和遗传结构，以及与近缘物种虎猫杂交的分子证据。在此，我们报告了涵盖其大部分分布区域的系统地理学分析（特别关注巴西标本，此前研究中对其采样不足），使用了一个包含2143个碱基对的线粒体基因组的新数据集，以及先前报道的线粒体DNA序列。我们的数据揭示了强烈的种群结构，并支持了该物种历史上从西到东的殖民过程。我们检测到两次种群扩张事件，一次发生在南美洲西部，时间较早（约20万年前），另一次发生在东部地区，时间较近（约6-5万年前），与巴西稀树草原环境的扩张相吻合。对包含从草原猫渗入线粒体DNA的虎猫个体的分析表明，两个物种之间完全没有共享单倍型，这表明它们的杂交发生在很久以前。最后，我们观察到巴西/乌拉圭草原猫的单倍型与在虎猫中采样的单倍型之间存在密切关系，这表明它们的杂交可能与草原猫向南美洲东部的种群扩张有关。
