Simulated genetic efficacy of metapopulation management and conservation value of captive reintroductions in a rapidly declining felid

In South Africa, cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) occur as a relictual, unmanaged population of ‘free-roamers’, managed metapopulation across fenced reserves, and in various captive facilities. To ensure that the Cheetah Metapopulation Project (CMP) is not at risk losing overall genetic variation to drift or inbreeding, we propose interventions, including exchanges between free-roamers supplementation with unrelated individuals from captivity. Simulated trajectories diversity under such intervention strategies over time could directly inform conservation action policy towards securing long-term integrity CMP. Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) were genotyped for 172 adult cheetahs free-roamer population, metapopulation, three major Management trajectory models tested including, (1) no intervention, (2) exchange (3) translocation single facility (4) several facilities into metapopulation. Discriminant Analysis Principal Components (DAPC) showed two populations are highly differentiated each other, whilst third genetically more similar 25 generations indicated 1 2 show significant losses heterozygosity due present proportional increase frequencies 1st- 2nd-degree relatives, this pairwise relatedness remain relatively constant 3 4. We emphasise potential importance reservoirs management threatened species recovery.