Abstract
Anthropogenic hybridization is recognized as a major threat to the long-term survival of natural populations. While identifying F1 hybrids might be simple, the detection of older admixed individuals is far from trivial and it is still debated whether they should be targets of management. Examples of anthropogenic hybridization have been described between wolves and domestic dogs, with numerous cases detected in the Italian wolf population. After selecting appropriate wild and domestic reference populations, we used empirical and simulated 39-autosomal microsatellite genotypes, Bayesian assignment and performance analyses to develop a workflow to detect different levels of wolf x dog admixture. Membership proportions to the wild cluster (qiw) and performance indexes identified two q-thresholds which allowed to efficiently classify the analysed genotypes into three assignment classes: pure (with no or negligible domestic ancestry), older admixed (with a marginal domestic ancestry) and recent admixed (with a clearly detectable domestic ancestry) animals. Based on their potential to spread domestic variants, such classes were used to define three corresponding management categories: operational pure, introgressed and operational hybrid individuals. Our multiple-criteria approach can help wildlife managers and decision makers in more efficiently targeting the available resources for the long-term conservation of species threatened by anthropogenic hybridization.
Highlights
Anthropogenic hybridization is recognized as a major threat to the long-term survival of natural populations
While natural hybridization between closely related taxa is frequently acknowledged as an evolutionary process providing novel adaptive gene assemblages[6,7], anthropogenic hybridization (AH), mainly caused by intentional admixture, translocations, habitat modifications and climate changes[8,9,10], is globally considered a serious conservation threat to the genetic integrity of local populations, which might be compromised by gene introgression from alien or domesticated species[11,12,13,14,15,16]
Genetic and genomic criteria for sample selection, we retained from the ISPRA (Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research) canid database the genotypes of 190 wolves and 89 dogs typed at a panel of 39 STRs commonly used to reconstruct individual genotypes in some of the most recent studies on wolf x dog hybridization in Europe[26,33,47,53]
Summary
Anthropogenic hybridization is recognized as a major threat to the long-term survival of natural populations. Membership proportions to the wild cluster (qiw) and performance indexes identified two qthresholds which allowed to efficiently classify the analysed genotypes into three assignment classes: pure (with no or negligible domestic ancestry), older admixed (with a marginal domestic ancestry) and recent admixed (with a clearly detectable domestic ancestry) animals. Based on their potential to spread domestic variants, such classes were used to define three corresponding management categories: operational pure, introgressed and operational hybrid individuals. Group including pure individuals and old admixed individuals not diagnosable or distinguishable from pure individuals [qiw ≥ 0.995]
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