Abstract
The recently extirpated Zanzibar leopard was the only known African leopard (Panthera pardus spp.) population restricted exclusively to a major island habitat. Although its demise was driven through habitat change and conflict with humans, given its role as a keystone species for the Zanzibar Archipelago, its successful potential reintroduction might offer a means for helping preserve the natural biodiversity of its former habitat. Whether this is feasible, however, would be contingent on both whether closely related source populations can be identified on mainland Africa, and whether the Zanzibar form exhibited any special adaptations that might need to be considered when choosing such a source. In light of these questions, we genomically profiled two of the six known historic specimens, to explore whether they represent a realistic candidate for de-extirpation through reintroduction. Our analyses indicate that despite its geographical separation, the Zanzibar leopard shared a close genetic relationship with mainland East African individuals. Furthermore, although its uniqueness as an island population was emphasised by genomic signatures of high inbreeding and increased mutation load, the latter similar to the level of the critically endangered Amur leopard (P. p. orientalis), we find no evidence of functionally significant genetic diversity unique to Zanzibar. We therefore conclude that should attempts to restore leopards to Zanzibar be considered, then mainland East African leopards would provide a suitable gene pool.
Originalsprog | Engelsk |
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Tidsskrift | Molecular Ecology |
Antal sider | 10 |
ISSN | 0962-1083 |
DOI | |
Status | E-pub ahead of print - 2024 |
Bibliografisk note
Funding Information:We thank Salim Kitwana Sururu, Maneno I. Khamis, The Department of Museum and Antiquities, Zanzibar, the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology Mammalogy Collection and MCZ\u2010CRYO for providing specimens of the Zanzibar leopard. We also thank Rasmus Heller and Ida Moltke for early access to their African leopard genomic dataset, and Xiao Xu from Peking University for his input on candidate genes of phenotypic traits in the Zanzibar leopards. We thank Sarah S. T. Mak for her help with lab work. This project was funded through ERC Consolidator Award 681396 \u2018Extinction Genomics\u2019 awarded to MTPG.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Author(s). Molecular Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.