Caracterização evolutiva de uma zona híbrida entre duas espécies de felídeos neotropicais (Leopardus tigrinus E L. geoffroyi) através da análise de marcadores nucleares

Abstract

Hybridization in animal species has been observed with increasing frequency in nature, probably due to advances in molecular techniques, which have allowed accessing a wealth of information on the biology of living beings. The Neotropical felids Leopardus geoffroyi e L. tigrinus have essentially allopatric distributions, with a narrow contact zone that includes Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil. Following initial suspicions raised by field studies, hybridization between these species was confirmed by the analysis of mitochondrial DNA and nuclear microsatellites (Trigo 2008). The main objective of this study was to clarify aspects related to hybridization and introgression between these species, including its symmetry and directionality, and also to test the application of multiple loci linked to the X chromosome to differentiate ancestral haplotype sharing from that resulting from the hybridization process. We selected 43 L. geoffroyi individuals and 38 L. tigrinus from regions that are near as well as outside the contact zone, in addition to six L. colocolo used as outgroups for comparison. Through the use of haplotype networks, it was possible to identify 38 hybrids, and based on shared haplotype blocks, we inferred that this number could reach more than 53 individuals. We observed bidirectional and quite asymmetric introgression between these species, corroborating the hypothesis that this is a current and complex hybridization process. In addition, an important result was the demonstration that the X chromosome segment analyzed here harbors sufficient information content to identify ancestral haplotypic blocks from each of the implicated species, opening up new avenues for in-depth genomic analyses targeting this hybridization process.