Introgression Of A. Chukar Genes Into A.magna Population In Liupanshan Region Of China

Alectoris magna and Alectoris chukar are all the indicated birds of arid and semi-arid environment in northern China. Previous study by mtDNA sequence comparisons for two species partridges from Liupanshan region has demonstrated some partridges from A.magna have A.chukar mtDNA genotype. However, the population genetic structure of Alectoris species using the microsatellite DNA data was very scarcely. In this article using integrated microsatellite DNA data we describe the genetic structure of A.magna and A.chukar. This study used microsatellite markers attempts to: (1) discover the genetic variation among sampling populations and reconstruct the phylogeographic scenario; (2) confirm the direction of gene flow (3) conjecture the causation and time of introgressive hybridization.We found an extensive divergence of genetic structure between populations of A.magna and A.chuka (Fst=0.2979, Rst=0.1942, Nei's D_A=3.016). 40 alleles in eight loci were observed in 88 partridges of A.magna, 35 alleles were observed in 64 partridges of A.chukar, among which 25 alleles were shared two species. We found that, locus MCW135, AB121114, AB035840 and AB0631676 showed very disparate patterns of allele distributions among the populations of A.magna and the populations of A.chukar for private alleles. 15 private alleles occurred only in populations of A.magna and not shared with the A.chukar, 10 private alleles occurred only in populations of A.chukar, but also found some private alleles from A.chukar occurred in A.magna populations from Zhuanglang, Lixian, Beidao and Haiyuan. Our results indicate that these partridges of A.magna populations morphologically identified as A.magna, as actually partly introgressed with A.chukar. There are 16 partridges samples of A.magna show a mosaic of alleles derived from both parental lineages in some microsatellite loci. We therefore confirm that A.chukar nuclear gene flowed into A.magna gene pool.The A.magna differs from the A.chukar in some diagnostic morphological divergence, for example: plumage traits, color of lore, supercilium, and neckband, numbers of tail feathers, possessing peculiar vocalizations and large body size, and significantly different ratios of tail to wing lengths. Morphologically, hybrids were very similar to A.magna.