1. Genetic Analysis Reveals a Distinct Lineage of Hog Deer (Axis porcinus) in Kratie Province, Cambodia.
- Author
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Gupta SK, Kumar A, van Berkel T, Emsens WJ, Singh B, Puls S, Rin N, and Jocque M
- Subjects
- Animals, Cambodia, DNA, Mitochondrial genetics, Genetic Variation, India, Phylogeny, Thailand, Deer genetics
- Abstract
The hog deer (Axis porcinus) is an endangered cervid with drastic population declines. There are 2 recognized subspecies of hog deer: A. p. porcinus, ranging from Punjab Province in Pakistan, Nepal, and the Northern part of India to Myanmar, and A. p. annamiticus found in Indo-China, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The current geographic range of A. p. annamiticus is still ambiguous. We analyzed variation in the mitochondrial DNA control region (mtDNA CR) to investigate the intra-species structure, differentiation, and demographic history of hog deer from Cambodia (Kratie Province), which we compared with the populations from India and Thailand. We also generated divergence time estimates using a concatenated dataset of complete Cyt b and partial CR. The CR data showed that Cambodian hog deer are genetically differentiated from the mainland Indian and Thai populations, forming a distinct basal clade. The time of divergence indicates that the Cambodian lineage split from the other 2 hog deer lineages around 0.51 Mya, during the Late Pleistocene. The results also suggest strong phylogeographic structure among hog deer: lineage A extends from Terai Arc (foothills of the Himalayas) to Assam, India (A. p. porcinus), lineage B from Manipur, India to Thailand (A. p. annamiticus), and lineage C is only known from Kratie Province, Cambodia. Lineage A exhibited a higher level of genetic diversity than lineages B and C, with recent demographic stability. Thus, the hog deer population in Kratie Province appears to be a distinct lineage that should be treated as an evolutionarily significant unit., (© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The American Genetic Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)
- Published
- 2022
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