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Mitochondrial DNA comparisons between the African wild cat, European wild cat and the domestic cat : : short communications

1997; Volume: 27; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

2410-8200

M. Faadiel Essop, Nomusa Y Mda, Jaques Flamand, Eric H. Harley,

Genetic diversity and population structure

There has been dispute regarding the evolutionary relationship between three closely related felids, Felis lybica, Felis catus and Felis silvestris. Recent molecular studies have reported conficting results. Some authors described F. lybica and F. silvestris as distinct, separate species, while others classified them as being conspecific. We constructed mitochondrial DNA restriction site maps of F. catus, F. silvestris and F. lybica using 16 restriction endonucleases. Our results show complete identity between F. catus and F. lybica, whereas an estimated sequence divergence of 0.9% was found between their mitochondrial DNA and that of F. silvestris. This is consistent with F. lybica and F. catus being regarded as subspecies of F. silvestris.