Determining population structure among Argentinian jaguars (Panthera onca)

FRANCISCO PISCIOTTANO; INTI TARIFA-RIESCHLE; CINTA PEGUEROLES QUERALT; JESSE R. WILLIS; IRENE CONSUELO JULCA CHAVEZ; GABALDÓN, TONI; SARAGÜETA, PATRICIA

San Pedro de Atacama

Workshop; Exploring Genomic Landscapes: An EMBO Workshop; 2019

EMBO, CGR (Chile)

Determining population structure among Argentinian jaguars (Panthera onca)Francisco Pisciottano*1 , Inti Tarifa1 , Cinta Pegueroles Queralt2,3 , Jesse R. Willis2, Irene Consuelo Julca Chavez 2,3 ,Toni Gabaldón 2,3,4, Patricia Saragüeta 1,51-Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental (IBYME-CONICET); 2-Bioinformatics and Genomics Programme. Centre for GenomicRegulation (CRG); 3-Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF); 4-Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA);5-Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA)* fpisciottano@gmail.com / pisciottano@dna.uba.arThe jaguar (Panthera onca) is the largest felid in America and the most emblematic South Americanpredator. This carnivore species holds a high environmental importance in all ecosystems it inhabits forits apex predator role. Jaguar populations have suffered an important decline over the last century andtoday this species is considered as critically endangered in Argentina. Ensuring the sustainability of theremaining jaguar populations demands a high degree of knowledge about the current state of theirgenetic variability levels and a description of population structure is essential, especially to allowrational translocation and reintroduction actions. The first jaguar reference genome was released in2017 (Figueiro et al. 2017) by the Jaguar Genome Project, a consortium we integrate.With the aim of generating useful resources and information for the jaguar genetics and conservationfrom the genomic perspective, we carried out the whole genome sequencing of 9 jaguar samples usingIllumina 2500 NSG technology. Here we present the first results obtained from these 9 genomescompared to the reference. We performed a population structure analysis in order to estimate theoptimal number of populations present in our data and a Multiple Correspondece Analysis (MCA)clustering of our samples based on over 280.000 homozygous variable positions in their genomes. Theestimation of the optimal number of populations present among our samples resulted in 6, according tothe Structure analysis. However, the MCA clustering analysis only revealed 5 groups of individuals.The main genetic cluster of animal obtained is integrated by captive animals from zoos and naturalreserves and surprisingly a Paraguayan male. Apart from this central group, a wild Argentinian samplefrom Misiones (a province in the north-east of the country) was located. Also, an animal of Uruguayanorigin and the reference, built from a Brazilian animal, located in individual clusters.More work including heterozygous variable position analysis will be performed to better describe thegenetic variability among the sequenced jaguar genomes and accurately describe the current geneticsituation and population structure of this species in Argentinian territory.