Data from: Low rates of hybridization between European wildcats and domestic cats in a human-dominated landscape

Hybridization between wild species and their domestic congeners is considered a major concern for species conservation. Genetic integrity of the European wildcat, for instance, is of interest as the species is outnumbered by domestic cats by several orders of magnitude throughout its range. We genotyped 1071 individual wildcat samples obtained from hair traps and roadkills collected across the highly fragmented forests of western central Europe, in Germany and Luxembourg, to assess domestic cat introgression in wildcats in human-dominated landscapes. Analyses using a panel of 75 autosomal SNPs suggested a low hybridization rate, with 3.5 % of wildcat individuals being categorized as F1, F2 or backcrosses to either parental taxon. We report that SNP data appeared to be more consistent than our set of 14 microsatellite markers and that SNPs showed higher accuracy to detect hybrids and their class in simulation analyses and were less affected by underlying population structure. Our results strongly suggest that very high hybridization rates previously reported for central Europe may be partly due to inadequate choice of markers and/or sampling design. Our example documents that a carefully selected SNP panel for hybrid detection may be used as an alternative to commonly applied microsatellite markers, including studies relying on non-invasively collected samples. In addition, our finding of overall low hybridization rates in central European wildcats provides an example of successful wildlife coexistence in human-dominated, fragmented landscapes.

野生物种与其驯养近缘类群之间的杂交被视为物种保护领域的重大关切之一。以欧洲野猫（European wildcat）为例，其遗传完整性（genetic integrity）广受关注——在其整个分布范围内，欧洲野猫的种群数量均以多个数量级远低于家猫。本研究对采自德国与卢森堡境内中欧西部高度破碎化森林中的1071份野生猫个体样本进行了基因分型，这些样本来源于毛发诱捕器捕获的个体以及道路致死个体，旨在评估人类主导景观中野生猫类的家猫基因渐渗情况。研究团队使用包含75个常染色体单核苷酸多态性（Single Nucleotide Polymorphism, SNP）位点的分型面板开展分析，结果显示杂交率较低，仅3.5%的野生猫个体被归类为F1、F2代杂交个体或回交到任一亲本类群的个体。研究表明，相较于本研究采用的14个微卫星标记（microsatellite markers）组合，SNP数据的一致性更高；在模拟分析中，SNP标记对杂交个体及其杂交类别的识别准确率更优，且受潜在种群结构的影响更小。本研究结果强烈提示，此前针对中欧地区报道的极高杂交率，可能部分源于标记选择不当或采样设计存在缺陷。本案例证实，精心筛选的SNP分型面板可作为常用微卫星标记的替代方案，适用于依赖非侵入性采集样本的相关研究。此外，本研究发现中欧地区野生猫类的整体杂交率较低，这为人类主导的破碎化景观中野生动物与人类实现共存的成功案例提供了实证参考。