A Preliminary Analysis Of Genetic Structure On Captivity And Shelter,rescue Wild Asian Elephants In Yunnan Province

As a grade-I protected species in China,Asian elephant(Elephas mamimus L.)has very high protection,ecological and cultural value.The number of wild Asian elephant population in China is about 300,and the captive population is about 243.Effective conservation strategies should consider maintaining and enriching the genetic diversity of wild populations,as well as the genetic diversity of captive populations as a reserve of germplasm resources.In this study,molecular samples of53 captive Asian elephants and 17 captive and rescued Chinese wild Asian elephants were collected from 5 captive Asian elephants in Yunnan Province from 2018 to 2021.Mitochondrial DNA and 10 microsatellite loci of these samples were analyzed,the main results were obtained:(1)A total of 15 mitochondrial haplotypes were identified in the captive and rescued Asian elephants in Yunnan Province.The distribution of the haplotypes showed obvious geographical distribution characteristics,among which the population from Thailand only had the haplotype of ? branch.The populations from Myanmar and Laos both had two branching haplotypes,with the largest number of haplotypes and three new haplotypes.Combined with genetic distance and phylogenetic tree results,it was found that there was inbreeding in the breeding elephants from Xishuangbanna Wild Elephant Valley and Kunming Zoo.The wild Asian elephants in China contains two mitochondrial haplotypes,belong to?and?,Cangyuan found the same resemblance with the Xishuangbanna and Pu'er first time,speculated that the region is the haploid original type,later because the habitat and broken,and the Burmese population isolation and illegal hunting for causes such as the haploid type disappear in Cangyuan rolling river south region.(2)The analysis of 10 microsatellite loci showed that the average polymorphism content(PIC)of captive Asian elephant was 0.692,and the average observed heterozygosity(HO)was 0.604,the average expected heterozygosity(HE)was 0.758,indicating that the genetic diversity of the whole population was high.However,according to the cluster analysis of captive sites,it was found that except for the high genetic diversity of wild elephant valley population,the genetic status of other populations was not optimistic.Among the wild populations in China,the genetic diversity in Xishuangbanna Banna region was higher,followed by Cangyuan region,and Pu 'er region had the lowest genetic diversity.Therefore,the opportunities for this population to communicate with other populations should be increased.Fst results showed that there was little genetic differentiation among Jinghong,Pu'er and Menghai populations,and there was moderate differentiation between the three populations and Cangyuan Nanguanhe populations.This study explored the genetic structure of Asian elephants in captive and rescued in Yunnan Province for the first time,and paid attention to the genetic status of captive elephants in China for the first time.It was found that individual sources and captivity patterns were closely related to the current situation of genetic structure.At the same time,the corresponding breeding and protection suggestions were put forward based on the research results,so as to provide basic data for wild Asian elephant population protection and captive population breeding in the future.