BIOGEOGRAPHIC AND EVOLUTIONARY ECOLOGY OF POLYMORPHIC PHENOTYPES: SPATIAL OCCURRENCE OF THE MELANISM IN GEOFFROYI'S CAT (Leopardus geoffroyi)

GONÇALVES DA SILVA, L. ; CUYCKENS, G. A. E.

Congreso; XIII Congresso de Ecologia III International Symposium of Ecology and Evolution.; 2017

Polymorphic phenotypes have often been inferred to play some adaptive roles in ecological,physiological and behavioral processes. Melanism is a coloration polymorphism that is present in variousgroups of organisms and it is rather common in the Felidae family. The Geoffroy's Cat (Leopardusgeoffroyi) is a South American wild cat that habitats a wide range of ecoregions from subtropical totemperate zones of the continent. We realize the first distribution mapping of the distinct phenotypes(non-melanistic and melanistic) of this species and investigated if the geographic distribution of eachphenotype directly responds to environmental predictors. We assessed the phenotypes frequency usinga chi-square test and generated potential distribution models for non-melanistic and melanisticindividuals. In addition, we employed the complete spatial randomness (CSR) analysis to test whetherthe spatial distribution of melanism was random throughout the geographic range of Geoffroyi's cat.The present study obtained 916 location records, being 675 of non-melanistic and 241 of melanisticindividuals. The presence and frequency of melanism varied considerably among different ecoregions,according to chi-square test and the CSR analysis. The niche equivalency estimates showed that nichesof non-melanistic and melanistic models were significantly different (44 to 49%). Moreover, thepredictive power of our models was considered excellent for both phenotypes (>95%), giving highconfidence levels for the geographic distributions obtained. So, following Gloger?s Rule; melanisticGeoffroy's cats are more frequent in ecoregions with a humid environment, especially the UruguayanSavanna and the Humid Chaco, leading a clear non-random distribution pattern driven by moisture. Thenon-random pattern exhibited by melanistic Geoffroy?s cat may indicate the occurrence of naturalselection affecting this trait and open up new avenues for investigations about the ecology ofpolymorphic phenotypes in natural populations of mammals.