On the use of genome‐wide data to model and date the time of anthropogenic hybridisation: An example from the Scottish wildcat

Abstract

Hybridisation and introgression are important drivers of evolutionary change (Barton, 2001). Human-mediated hybridisation, however, is of increasing concern in conservation biology (Allendorf et al., 2001). Evolutionary processes may be disrupted by human activity, particularly when species distributions are altered by, for example, climate change, landscape use, or introduction of non-native species, leading to contact between populations that were previously allopatric. Whilst it is recognised this can generate a range

Informing conservation strategies with museum genomics: Long‐term effects of past anthropogenic persecution on the elusive European wildcat

“…More fine‐scale evaluations for introgression should incorporate higher SNP numbers, especially to distinguish different hybrid categories with high certainties (Mattucci et al, 2019; Nussberger et al, 2014; Oliveira et al, 2015; Steyer et al, 2018). As previous studies have suggested prehistoric gene flow between the ancestors of European wildcats and domestic cats, future studies focused on ancient introgression will probably be based on whole‐genome sequencing (WGS) data and might even take paleogenomic evidence into account in order to unravel these complicated phylogenetic relationships (Driscoll et al, 2007; Howard‐McCombe et al, 2021; Ottoni et al, 2017).…”

Genetic integrity of European wildcats: Variation across biomes mandates geographically tailored conservation strategies

“…This result is consistent with the pattern reported in a survey targeting the six priority conservation areas for wildcat conservation in Scotland (Littlewood et al, 2014), which revealed that the ratio of unneutered hybrids to wildcats in those areas was 6:1 (Breitenmoser et al, 2019). Howard-McCombe et al (2021) also suggested that wildcats are exclusively found in the UK captive population, further supporting a critical scenario for the wildliving population in Scotland.…”

Evaluating hybrid speciation and swamping in wild carnivores with a decision‐tree approach

“…Generally, hybridization with domestic animals only becomes a significant threat to biodiversity when excessive genetic swamping threatens to eradicate a species or subspecies that occurs nowhere else (Gómez et al, 2015). This is the situation in the welldocumented case of the Scottish wildcat, in which the majority (85%) of the critically endangered population is introgressed with domestic cat, forming a hybrid swarm (Howard-McCombe et al, 2021). Although purebred species may be lost in the process, it has been argued that hybrid swarms could give rise to unique hybrid lineages (Nolte & Tautz, 2010).…”