1742 Studing of population structure of European wild boar (Sus scrofa) and its subspecies, inhabiting Russia

Genetic studies help to shed a light on the topic but it embraces various aspects including economic, social, and technical issues. Genetic structure of wild boars from Russia can represent flexible territorial clusterization on large geographical areas. In this study, we performed whole-genome SNP analysis of wild boars inhabiting the Russian Federation. Forty animals represent 11 regional subpopulations of the wild boars. They were genotyped using Porcine 60K BeadChip (Illumina Inc., USA). All populations belong to European part of Russia, including Arkhangelsk, Chelyabinsk, Kirov, Krasnodar, Kurgan, Novgorod, Smolensk, Tumen, Udmurtia, Vladimir, and Volgograd regions. We used PLINK v1.09 to obtain Multi-Dimensions Scaling matrix (MDS) and pairwise clustering based on IBS distances. Neighbor Joining tree provided by MEGA v.7 software, based on Tamura-Nei model. In addition, we evaluated population structure of wild boars using ADMIXTURE 1.20 package and calculated pairwise differences and F-statistics between subpopulations. Visualization of data was performed by R. Analysis of spatial distribution showed that at least four groups of animals, which belong to Arkhangelsk, Kirov, Novgorod, and Vladimir subpopulations, performed separated clustering. Another seven subpopulations have formed a huge single group. We could observe the exchange of single animals between Smolensk and Arkhangelsk subpopulations. The same result was shown by NJ-tree dendrogram and IBS-clustering matrix—most part of animals formed main core with minor branches. Analysis of admixture was performed for the number of clusters (K) from 2 to 7. Analysis of population structure performed for the clusters number K = 2 and 3 according to obtained lowest values of CV errors (0.76395 and 1.42878, respectively) and showed high divergence of the Arkhangelsk subpopulation among all other subpopulations. The presence of clusters may probably indicate the existence of wild boar subspecies. There are no Asian subspecies of wild boar in the European territory of Russia, so we can presume that Arkhangelsk wild boar subpopulation belongs to European-Caucasian subspecies of wild boar. This is the first large-scale analysis of the Russian wild boars performed on whole-genome level. Studies will be continued with involving wild boars inhabiting the whole area of distribution of this species in Russia.