Genetic diversity, relatedness and inbreeding of ranched and fragmented Cape buffalo populations in southern Africa.

Deon De Jager,Cindy Kim Harper,Paulette Bloomer

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0236717

Abstract

Wildlife ranching, although not considered a conventional conservation system, provides a sustainable model for wildlife utilization and could be a source of valuable genetic material. However, increased fragmentation and intensive management may threaten the evolutionary potential and conservation value of species. Disease-free Cape buffalo (Syncerus caffer caffer) in southern Africa exist in populations with a variety of histories and management practices. We compared the genetic diversity of buffalo in national parks to private ranches and found that, except for Addo Elephant National Park, genetic diversity was high and statistically equivalent. We found that relatedness and inbreeding levels were not substantially different between ranched populations and those in national parks, indicating that breeding practices likely did not yet influence genetic diversity of buffalo on private ranches in this study. High genetic differentiation between South African protected areas highlighted their fragmented nature. Structure analysis revealed private ranches comprised three gene pools, with origins from Addo Elephant National Park, Kruger National Park and a third, unsampled gene pool. Based on these results, we recommend the Addo population be supplemented with disease-free Graspan and Mokala buffalo (of Kruger origin). We highlight the need for more research to characterize the genetic diversity and composition of ranched wildlife species, in conjunction with wildlife ranchers and conservation authorities, in order to evaluate the implications for management and conservation of these species across different systems.

Highlights

Wildlife ranching, where wild animals are managed in fenced areas, is practiced in various regions around the world, including North America, Europe and Africa [1,2,3,4,5]
The allelic richness (AR) analysis showed that Addo Elephant National Park (AENP) had significantly lower genetic diversity than any other population in this study (Fig 1A, S3 Table)
We evaluated and compared the genetic diversity, relatedness and inbreeding, as well as characterized the structure of disease-free Cape buffalo (Syncerus caffer caffer) in private ranches and national parks in southern Africa

Summary

Introduction

Wildlife ranching, where wild animals are managed in fenced areas, is practiced in various regions around the world, including North America, Europe and Africa [1,2,3,4,5]. Whether wildlife ranching is beneficial for conservation is often debated [6,7,8]. While wildlife ranching preserves habitat that would otherwise be converted for other land-use types [9], it comes. Conclusions arrived at are those of the authors and are not necessarily to be attributed to the NRF. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

Methods

Results

Conclusion