Domestic Cats Have Wiped Out the Scottish Wildcat. Only 'Hybrid Swarm' Remains

Slashdot reader sciencehabit writes:

The Scottish wildcat--a fierce, solitary feline with striking stripes and a legendary reputation in Scotland--may be extinct, due to breeding with domestic cats. Domestic cats and European wildcats (a species to which the Scottish wildcat belongs) shared Europe for more than 2000 years without interbreeding, according to a new study. But around 70 years ago, something changed.

In the mid-1950s, more than 5% of the genetic markers in Scottish wildcats began to resemble those of domestic cats, according to a second new study. After 1997, that figure jumped to as high as 74%. In the wild, the markings of the Scottish wildcat became muddled and spotted, its short, bushy tail replaced by the long, thin tail of domestic cats. Today, the genome of the Scottish wildcat is so 'swamped' with domestic cat DNA that the animal is 'genomically extinct,' the authors conclude. All that's left in nature is a 'hybrid swarm,' they write, a confused mix of wild and domestic DNA. 'Everything these wildcats have evolved over thousands of years is being lost in a few generations,' says the study's lead author, Jo Howard-McCombe, a conservation geneticist at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland.

The reason appears to be a shrinking wildcat population in Scotland—the last stronghold of the European wildcat in Britain—and human encroachment, both of which forced the wildcats to breed with domestic cats. The only hope may lie in a captive population of Scottish wildcats, which researchers have begun releasing into the wild, far from domestic felines. The team hopes that as the animals adapt to their environment over several generations, they'll begin to shed their domestic DNA. It may be an uphill battle, but the project's lead, Helen Senn, says, 'We've got to start somewhere.'

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