Abstract
In developing countries, cross‐breeding between local breeds and indigene or exotic breeds represents one of the main threats to the livestock diversity, leading to genetic dilution and loss of unique allelic combination underlying essential local adaptive traits. In this study, two Algerian sheep breeds, known to be highly admixed, were considered as a case study, to demonstrate how combination of different methodologies coupled with the use of specific softwares can be efficient to assess the spatial structuration of a hybrid zone, even in a case of extreme admixture. A fine sampling covering distribution areas of both breeds was implemented in order to study the admixture area and adjacent zones from a phenotypic (i.e., 19 quantitative traits were considered) and a genetic point of view (i.e., 21 microsatellites markers were used). Both approaches gave concordant patterns, highlighting areas with sheep most differentiated (or less admixed) for each breed. In detail, the region of Biskra appeared as the most preserved for the Ouled‐Djellal breed and the northwest of Laghouat was identified as the most preserved area for the Rembi breed. The approach proposed in the study offers a low‐cost solution to identify the most representative flocks of a breed, allowing the implementation of efficient conservation plans.
Highlights
Many areas of biology focus on the phenomenon of hybridization, that is, the interbreeding between individuals from genetically distinct populations resulting in at least some offspring of mixed ancestry (Barton & Hewitt, 1989; Futuyma & Shapiro, 1995)
We considered the extreme case of admixture between Ouled-Djellal and Rembi as a case study, in order to analyze at a fine geographic scale, the hybrid zone, from a phenotypic and genetic point of view
95.80% of individuals were successfully typed for each microsatellite
Summary
Many areas of biology focus on the phenomenon of hybridization, that is, the interbreeding between individuals from genetically distinct populations resulting in at least some offspring of mixed ancestry (Barton & Hewitt, 1989; Futuyma & Shapiro, 1995). Given the particularity of the processes occurring in hybrid zones, these areas are of considerable interest from an evolutionary point of view; such as Hewitt (1988) defined them as “natural laboratories for evolutionary studies.”. The main goal of studies focusing on hybrid zones was to assess admixture between wild native populations and wild exotic populations or domesticated populations (e.g., Biosa et al, 2015; Harvey, Glover, Taylor, Creer, & Carvalho, 2016; Muñoz-Fuentes, Vilà, Green, Negro, & Sorenson, 2007; Oliveira et al, 2015).
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