On the use of genome-wide data to model and date the time of
anthropogenic hybridisation: an example from the Scottish wildcat
Abstract
While hybridisation has long been recognised as an important natural
phenomenon in evolution, the conservation of taxa subject to
introgressive hybridisation from domesticated forms is a subject of
intense debate. Hybridisation of the Scottish wildcat, the UK’s sole
extant native felid, with the domestic cat is a good example in this
regard. We develop a modelling framework to determine the timescale and
mode of introgression using approximate Bayesian computation (ABC).
Applying the model to ddRAD-seq data from 129 individuals, genotyped at
6,546 loci, we show that a population of wildcats genetically distant
from domestic cats is still present in Scotland, though these
individuals are found almost exclusively within the captive breeding
program. Most wild-living cats sampled were introgressed to some extent.
Additionally, we evaluate the effectiveness of current methods that are
used to classify hybrids. We show that an optimised 35 SNP panel is a
better predictor of the ddRAD-based hybrid score in comparison with a
morphological method.