Evaluation of the genetic diversity of Iranian maral deer (Cervus elaphus maral) based on mitochondrial and microsatellite markers

Maral deer is the biggest native deer of Iran that in the past was existed in the Caspian area. During the recent decades most of the deer populations have been exposed to the size reduction due to several reasons such as disturbance of the forests, distribution of the cities and the illegal hunting. These factors have been fragmented maral populations into few small naturally reserved and one wild populations over years. The smaller are the populations the less adaptation and merit would be expected in the wild populations. This is why there should be conservation management for these populations. In order to have a successful management, there must be sufficient information of the population and genetic structure from the species. In order to evaluate the genetic structure of the Iranian maral deer populations, samples were collected from Gorgan, Gilan, Mazandaran, Semnan, Qazvin and East Azerbijan and the genetic diversity between and within populations were estimated using mitochondrial and microsatellite markers.Materials and methods:Fecal, blood and tissue samples were collected from wild and reserved populations. In order to estimate the genetic diversity of maral deer the mitochondrial markers (D-Loop and cytb) and 6 microsatellite markers were amplified. The amplified products were sequenced and the sequences of D-Loop (917bp) and cytb (1140bp) were analyzed to determine the genetic parameters of the population diversity. The microsatellite markers were analyzed by ABI genetic analyzer and genetic parameters were determined.Results and discussion:The results from mitochondrial markers showed low genetic diversity between maral populations, 57.38 percent of the diversity was due to the between and 42.62 percent was due to the within population diversity. The main reason for this data was diversity observed in D-Loop between maral populations and the Fst was significant for this marker. The Gorgan population had the highest diversity. The genetic distance was higher between East-Azerbijan and Mazandaran and between Semnan and Qazvin populations. The D-Loop and cytb sequences had 5 and 4 haplotypes, respectively with 95 percent haplotype diversity. Tajima s D showed that maral populations were suffered from tense natural selection at the late glacial and had funder effect. The phylogenetic analysis of maral and other red deer species showed that maral were in the same cluster with west European red deer and had low similarity with the median Asia and African-north American red deer.In order to estimate the genetic diversity of maral deer, 6 microsatellite loci were amplified. The mean observed polymorphism was 76 percent. The F was negative for the all loci indicated that there was genetic diversity within maral populations based on the microsatellite information. The AMOVA showed that 10 percent of the diversity was from between and 90 percent was from within populations. The genetic similarity matrix showed higher than 90 percent similarity between maral populations.According to the genetic distance and Fst from mitochondrial and microsatellite markers, it is recommended to transfer male deer from Gorgan and Mazandaran populations to the other reserved populations to improve the genetic diversity by gene fellow and avoiding further reduction in genetic diversity.

کلیدواژه ها:

Maral Deer ، Genetic Diversity ، Mitochondrial Genome ، Microsatellite Markers ، Gene Flow