Quilodrán Claudio S, Nussberger Beatrice, Macdonald David W, Montoya-Burgos Juan I, Currat Mathias
Department of Zoology University of Oxford Oxford UK.
Department of Genetics and Evolution - Anthropology Unit Laboratory of Anthropology Genetics and Peopling History University of Geneva Geneva Switzerland.
Evol Appl. 2020 May 5;13(8):2101-2112. doi: 10.1111/eva.12968. eCollection 2020 Sep.
Hybridization between wild and domesticated organisms is a worldwide conservation issue. In the Jura Mountains, threatened European wildcats () have been demographically spreading for approximately the last 50 years, but this recovery is coupled with hybridization with domestic cats (). Here, we project the pattern of future introgression using different spatially explicit scenarios to model the interactions between the two species, including competition and different population sizes. We project the fast introgression of domestic cat genes into the wildcat population under all scenarios if hybridization is not severely restricted. If the current hybridization rate and population sizes remain unchanged, we expect the loss of genetic distinctiveness between wild and domestic cats at neutral nuclear, mitochondrial and Y chromosome markers in one hundred years. However, scenarios involving a competitive advantage for wildcats and a future increase in the wildcat population size project a slower increase in introgression. We recommend that future studies assess the fitness of these hybrids and better characterize their ecological niche and their ecological interactions with parental species to elucidate effective conservation measures.
野生生物与驯化生物之间的杂交是一个全球性的保护问题。在汝拉山脉，濒危的欧洲野猫（）在过去约50年里一直在人口统计学上扩散，但这种恢复伴随着与家猫（）的杂交。在这里，我们使用不同的空间明确情景来预测未来基因渗入的模式，以模拟这两个物种之间的相互作用，包括竞争和不同的种群规模。如果杂交不受严格限制，我们预计在所有情景下家猫基因都会迅速渗入野猫种群。如果当前的杂交率和种群规模保持不变，我们预计在一百年内，野生和家猫在中性核、线粒体和Y染色体标记上的遗传独特性将会丧失。然而，涉及野猫竞争优势和野猫种群规模未来增加的情景预测基因渗入的增加速度会较慢。我们建议未来的研究评估这些杂交种的适应性，更好地描述它们的生态位以及它们与亲本物种的生态相互作用，以阐明有效的保护措施。
