Genetic diversity and phylogenetic relationships in feral pig populations from Argentina

ACOSTA, DIANA B.; FIGUEROA, CARLOS E.; FERNÁNDEZ, GABRIELA P.; CARPINETTI, BRUNO N.; MERINO, MARIANO L.

MAMMALIAN BIOLOGY

ELSEVIER GMBH

Año: 2019 vol. 99 p. 27 - 36

1616-5047

In Argentina, domestic pigs (Sus scrofa Linnaeus 1758) were introduced during the first Buenos Aires foundation,in the year 1536. Their provenance was mainly from the Iberian Peninsula, the Canary Islandsand Cape Verde. In 1541 those pigs were released and, consequently, the first feral populations wereoriginated. Thereafter, the species propagated both naturally and through human action, reaching adistribution that covers most of the Argentinian territory. The objective of this study is to geneticallycharacterize the oldest feral pig populations in Argentina, making use of the mitochondrial control region(CR) and the amelogenin gene (AmelY), in order to determine their phylogenetic origin and corroborateits consistency with the historic information. The obtained results indicate that most of the feral pigs inCorrientes and Buenos Aires populations are positioned in the European subclades, E1-A and E1-C forCR, and HY1 and HY2 for AmelY. Despite this fact, a low frequency of individuals of Asian origin wasfound in populations from Buenos Aires, whereas none of them disclosed African ancestry. Furthermore,given that a large proportion of feral pigs found in the species? original sites in Argentina have Europeanancestry, we can partially corroborate the historical records.