GENETIC-STRUCTURE OF DIFFERENT POPULATIONS OF DOMESTIC CAT IN SPAIN, ITALY, AND ARGENTINA AT A MICRO-GEOGRAPHIC LEVEL

Genetic characteristics of the natural populations of domestic cat Fel is silvestris f. catus Linnaeus, 1758 were studied in four cities (Bar celona, Catalonia; Palma on Majorca, Balearic islands; Rimini, Italy; Buenos Aires, Argentina) at microgeographic level. The application of different analytical techniques in different population structures (co lonies and subpopulations) showed that the degree of genetic different iation between cat population within these cities was very low, especi ally when it was compared with the genetic heterogeneity found for oth er mammals (Nei's and hierarchical gene diversity analyses and estimat es of theoretical gene flow). The theoretical gene flow was very high, being F. catus in these urban contests, in a situation very near to p anmixia where there was very little spatial genetic structuration and heterogeneity with independence of the cities analyzed. Generally, the genetic structure of these four cat populations showed to be very sim ilar although there were noteworthy ecological differences among the f our cities analyzed. This means that the cat population dynamics in di verse cities should be affected by the same demographic and genetic pa rameters. Only, with certain spatial techniques, the Buenos Aires's ca t populations showed some differences in some spatial autocorrelation correlograms with regard the other three cat populations analyzed.