Full text in pdf format
Cat genetic profiles in Catalonia, Spain
Manuel Ruiz-GarciaI,II,III; Diana AlvarezI,III
IDepartamento de Biologia, Unidad de Genetica (Biologia Evolutiva), Facultad de Ciencias, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, CRA. 7A No 43-82, Bogota, DC, Colombia. E. mails: mruiz@javercol.javeriana.edu.co, mruiz@zeus.uniandes.edu.co. Send correspondence to M.R.-G.
IIDepartamento de Ciencias Biologicas, Universidad de Los Andes, Calle 18, Carrera 1E, Bogota, DC, Colombia.
IIICIGEEM, Avd. Virgen Montserrat 207, 6o la, Barcelona, 08041, Spain.
ABSTRACT
A study was made of three aspects of the genetic composition of some cat populations in Catalonia (Northeastern Iberian Peninsula, Spain). The allelic frequencies of the nine genes (O, A, T, D, L, S, W, C and I), which control color, tabby and length of coat, were investigated: 1) the cat population of Llansa only 8 km from the French frontier on the Mediterranean coast and a new sample obtained in the rural district of Castelldefels were shown to be in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium for the O and S loci. 2) The second question concerned an analysis of the genetic relationships between the cat population of Llansa and other populations of Western Europe. Ruiz-Garcia et al. (Mis. Zool. 18: 169-196, 1995) looked for genetic similarity between cat populations in Northern Catalonia and France. Populations in central and Southern Catalonia had been found to be very distant from the French cat populations, genetically speaking. However, the cat population analyzed in Northern Catalonia did not show any increase in the genetic similarity with the French populations, and was found to be similar to the other cat populations in Catalonia, previously analyzed. A new sample of cats from Llansa, the northernmost of all populations in Catalonia sampled up to now, showed no increase in genetic similarity to French populations compared to other groups from Catalonia. The genic frequencies of the coat characteristics loci showed that the French and British cat populations were furthest away from the population of Llansa, among those of Western Europe. In general, the cat populations we sampled in Catalonia showed a greater genetic resemblance to Eastern Mediterranean and North African populations than to the cat populations found in Western Europe. 3) The third aspect concerns population change over time. In 1989, the genetic composition of a cat population from Castelldefels was analyzed. In 1994 this population was sampled again, and no significant differences were found in the eight allelic frequencies compared, which demonstrates great stability over time in the genetic profile of this cat population.
Keywords: cat populations; genetic composition.
REFERENCES
Cavalli-Sforza, L.L. and Edwards, A.W.F. (1967). Phylogenetic analysis: models and estimation procedures. Evolution 21: 550-570.
Commitee on Standardized Genetic Nomenclature for Cat (1968). Standardized genetic nomenclature for the domestic cat. J. Hered. 59: 39-40.
Crisci, J.V. and Lopez-Armengol, M.F. (1983). Introducción a la Teoria y Práctica de la Taxonomia Numérica. Secretaria
General de la Organizacion de Estados Americanos. Programa regional de desarrollo cientifico y tecnológico, Washington D.C.
Cuadras, C.M. (1991). Métodos de Analisis Multivariante. PPU, Barcelona.
Dreux, P. (1975). Genetique de population des chats domestique de Marseille (Bouche-du-Rhone, France). Ann. Genet. Sel. anim. 7: 23-33.
Everitt, B.S. (1992). The Analysis of Contingency Tables. 2nd edn. Chapman and Hull, London.
Farris, J.S. (1972). Estimating phylogenetic trees from distance matrices. Am. Nat. 106: 645-668.
Gower, J.C. (1966). Some distance properties of latent root and vector methods used in multivariate analysis. Biometrika 53: 325-338.
Gower, J.C. and Ross, G.J.S. (1969). Minimum spanning trees and single cluster analysis. Appl. Stat. 18: 54-64.
Kruskal, J.B. (1964a). Multidimensional scaling by optimizing goodness of fit to a nonmetric hypothesis. Psychometrika 29: 1-27.
Kruskal, J.B. (1964b). Nonmetric multidimensional scaling: a numerical method. Psychometrika 29: 28-42.
Ku, H.H. and Kullback, S. (1974). Log-linear models in contingency table analysis. Am. Statistician 28: 115-122.
Lloyd, A.T. and Todd, N.B. (1989). Domestic Cat Gene Frequencies. A Catalogue and Bibliography. Tetrahedron Publications, Newcastle upon Tyne.
Mickevich, M.F. (1980). Taxonomic congruence: Rohlf and Sokal's misunderstanding. Syst. Zool. 29: 162-176.
Morrill, R.B. and Todd, N.B. (1978). Mutant allele frequencies in the domestic cats of Denver, Colorado. J. Hered. 69: 131-134.
Natoli, E. and De Vito, E. (1988). The mating system of feral cats living in a group. In: The Domestic Cat, the Biology of its Behaviour (Turner, D.C. and Bateson, P., eds). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 99-108.
Nei, M. (1972). Genetic distance between populations. Amer. Nat. 106: 283-292.
Nei, M. (1987). Molecular Evolutionary Genetics. Columbia University Press, New York.
Pontier, D. (1989). Annual variations of coat gene frequencies in the domestic cat Felis catus in France. In: Domestic Cat Gene Frequencies. A Catalogue and Bibliography (Lloyd, A.T. and Todd, N.B., eds). Tetrahedron Publications, Newcastle upon Tyne, pp. 17-21.
Robinson, R. (1971). On gene frequencies in cats of Benidorm, Spain. Carnivore Genet. Newsl. 2: 32-33.
Robinson, R. (1972). Mutant allele frequencies in the cats of Cyprus. Theor. Appl. Genet. 42: 293-296.
Robinson, R. (1977). Genetics for Cat Breeders. 2nd edn. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Robinson, R. (1987). Mutant gene frequencies in cats of the Greater London area. Theor. Appl. Genet. 74: 579-583.
Robinson, R. and Manchenko, G.P. (1981). Cat gene frequencies of the USSR. Genetica 55: 41-46.
Robinson, R. and Silson, M. (1969). Mutant allele frequencies in cats of Southern England. Theor. Appl. Genet. 39: 326-329.
Rogers, J.S. (1972). Measures of genetic similarity and genetic distance. Stud. Genet. 7: 145-153.
Rohlf, F.J. (1982). Consensus indices for comparing classifications. Math. Biosci. 59: 131-144.
Ruiz-Garcia, M. (1988). Frecuencias alélicas mutantes en una población de gatos domésticos urbanos (Barcelona) y en una población de gatos rurales (Castelldefels rural) en Cataluna, Espana. Genét. Ibér. 40: 157-187.
Ruiz-Garcia, M. (1989). The urban effect in two Spanish domestic cat populations. C. Gene. J. 6: 1-26.
Ruiz-Garcia, M. (1990a). Mutant allele frequencies in domestic cat in Catalonia, Spain, and their genetic relationships with Spanish and English colonial cat populations. Genetica 82: 209-214.
Ruiz-Garcia, M. (1990b). Mutant allele frequencies in domestic cat populations on the Spanish Mediterranean coast, and their genetic distances from other European and North African cat populations. Genetica 82: 215-221.
Ruiz-Garcia, M. (1990c). Frecuencias alélicas en la población de gatos de Palma de Mallorca e Ibiza y relaciones genéticas con otras poblaciones de gatos europeos y norteafricanos. Evol. Biol. 4: 189-216.
Ruiz-Garcia, M. (1990d). Frecuencias alélicas en la población de gatos domésticos de la isla de Menorca (Baleares): Diferentes modelos de evolución colonizadora. Evol. Biol. 4: 307-342.
Ruiz-Garcia, M. (1991). Más sobre la genética de poblaciones de Felis catus en la costa Mediterránea española: Un análisis de la estructura genética de las poblaciones naturales de gatos. Evol. Biol. 5: 227-283.
Ruiz-Garcia, M. (1993). Analysis of the Evolution and genetic diversity within and between Balearic and Iberian cat populations. J. Hered. 84: 173-180.
Ruiz-Garcia, M. (1994). Genetic profiles from coat genes of natural Balearic cat populations: An eastern Mediterranean and North-African origin. Genet. Sel. Evol. 26: 39-64.
Ruiz-Garcia, M. (1997). Genetic relationships among some new cat populations sampled in Europe: A spatial autocorrela- tion analysis. J. Genet. 75 (in press).
Ruiz-Garcia, M. and Klein, K.K. (1997). Genetic structure of domestic cat populations at Micro and Macro-geographical levels: Two examples (Catalonia, Spain and Mid-western USA). J. Genet. (in press).
Ruiz-Garcia, M., Ruiz, S. and Alvarez, D. (1995). Perfiles genéticos de poblaciones de gatos domésticos (Felis catus) de la província de Girona (Catalunya, NE, Espana) y posibles relaciones genéticas con otras poblaciones europeas occidentales. Mis. Zool. 18: 169-196.
Saitou, N. and Nei, M. (1987). The neighbor-joining method: A new method for reconstructing phylogenetic trees. Mol. Biol. Evol. 4: 406-425.
Schuh, R.T. and Farris, J.S. (1981). Methods for investigating taxonomic congruence and their application to the Leptopodomorpha. Syst. Zool. 30: 331-351.
Sneath, P.H. and Sokal, R.R. (1973). Numerical Taxonomy. W.H. Freeman, San Francisco.
Sokal, R.R., Fiala, K.L. and Hart, G. (1984). OTU stability and factors determining taxonomic stability: examples from Caminalcules and the Leptomorpha. Syst. Zool. 33: 387-407.
Todd, N.B., Robinson, R. and Clark, J.M. (1974). Gene frequencies in domestic cats of Greece. J. Hered. 65: 227231.
Williams, K. (1976). The failure of Pearson's goodness of fit statistic. The Statistician 25: 49.
Wright, M. and Walters, S. (1982). El Gato. Ed Blume, Barcelona, Spain.