The Degree of Genetic Admixture within Species from Genus Cervus

The aim of present study is to estimate the level of admixture within species originating from genus Cervus (family Cervidae) that can reflect not only their phylogeny origin, but mainly the impact of introgression and hybridization in Red deer population inhabit the forest area of Slovakia. It was happened over the last few centuries. Recently, the introduction and hybridization by non-native species is considered as the major risk of diversity loss within autochthonous Red deer populations in area of Central Europe. The genomic data were obtained from in total 61 animals (species A. axis, D. dama, C. elaphus, C. Nippon, C. canadensis) based on applying the cross-species SNP genotyping (Illumina BovineSNP50 BeadChip). The quality control of genotyping data has been performed to eliminate any SNPs with genotyping errors (loci with >10% missing genotypes), less informative markers (MAF<0.01) and markers deviating from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium limit of 0.0001. From totally 43.21% of successfully genotyped markers up to 843 were informative for subsequent estimation. As expected the presence of admixed individuals was found within Red deer and Wapiti populations, but the signal of cross-species admixture was low. The membership probabilities of individuals were higher than 90% within each of analysed cervid group. Our study showed that the Slovak Red deer population can provide valuable gene pool within Central European deer populations in respect to the management of genetic resources conservation strategies.