Genetic mixture in Argentine wild populations of Sus scrofa through the molecular marker control region

FIGUEROA, C.E.; ACOSTA, D.B.; MAC ALLISTER, M.E.; FERNÁNDEZ, G.P.; MERINO, M.L.

Congreso; 100th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Mammalogists; 2021

Currently, wild pigs populations inhabit most of the Argentine territory. They have their origins in the first domestic pigs introduced by the Spanish conquest released in the 16th century and the wild boars introduced at the beginning of the 20th century. The objective of this work was to identify hybridization between the different populations of wild pigs in Argentina using the control region molecular marker, for which 377 tissue samples were analyzed. Considering the short period of time since the origin of the wild pig populations in Argentina, and the few individuals that gave rise to these populations, the values of haplotype and nucleotidic diversity calculated for the total set of samples (Hd = 0.866±0.01 and π = 0.00959±0.00054) were high and could indicate gene flow between wild boar, feral pig populations and hybridization with domestic pigs. Clusters using SAMOVA and BAPS resulted in groups where sequences from both wild boar and feral pigs populations collapsed (k = 5 groups, p-value = 0.000±0.000 for SAMOVA, and k = 7 groups, with marginal likelihood = -1639.67 for BAPS), supporting the hypothesis of hybridization between them. Crossbreeding between wild populations of pigs and domestic pigs would indicate an increase in invasive potential and impact on the environment and the agricultural production