THE CHALLENGE OF INCORPORATING EX SITU STRATEGIES FOR JAGUAR CONSERVATION

FONT, D.; GOMEZ FERNANDEZ, M. J. ; ROBINO, FACUNDO; AUED, B; DE BUSTOS, SOLEDAD; PAVIOLO, AGUSTIN; QUIROGA, VERÓNICA; PATRICIA MIROLL

BIOLOGICAL JOURNAL OF THE LINNEAN SOCIETY

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2023

0024-4066

The loss of biodiversity is an ongoing process and existing efforts to halt it are based on differentconservation strategies. The “One Plan Approach” introduced by IUCN proposes to consider all populations of a species under a unified management plan. In this work we follow this premise inorder to unify in situ and ex situ management of one of the most critically endangered mammals inArgentina, the jaguar. We assessed pedigrees of captive animals, finding that 44.93% of thereported relatedness were erroneous according to molecular data. Captive individuals formed adistinct genetic cluster. The three remaining locations for jaguars in Argentina constitute twogenetic groups, the Atlantic Forest and the Chaco-Yungas clusters. Genetic variability is lowcompared with other populations of the species in America and it is not significantly different between wild and captive populations in Argentina. These findings demonstrate that genetic studies aiming to include captive individuals into conservation management are very valuable, and should incorporate several parameters such the mean individual relatedness, individual inbreeding, rare and private alleles, and mitochondrial haplotypes. Finally, we discuss two ongoing ex situ management actions and postulate the need for genetic monitoring of the breeding and release of animals.