{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"institution":[{"name":"Authorea, Inc."}],"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,6,3]],"date-time":"2025-06-03T16:41:29Z","timestamp":1748968889424,"version":"3.41.0"},"posted":{"date-parts":[[2024,1,31]]},"group-title":"Preprints","reference-count":0,"publisher":"Wiley","content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":[],"accepted":{"date-parts":[[2024,1,31]]},"abstract":"<jats:p id=\"p1\">The red leopard (Panthera pardus) colour morph is a colour variant that\noccurs only in South Africa, where it is confined to the Central\nBushveld bioregion. Red leopards have been spreading over the past 40\nyears, which raises the speculation that the prevalence of this\nphenotype is related to low dispersal of young individuals owing to high\noff-take in the region. Intensive selective hunting tends to remove\nlarge resident males from the breeding population, which gives young\nmales the chance to mate with resident females that are more likely to\nbe their relatives, eventually increasing the frequency of rare genetic\nvariants. To investigate the genetic mechanisms underlying the red coat\ncolour morph in leopards, and whether its prevalence in South Africa\nrelates to an increase in genetic relatedness in the population, we\nsequenced exons of six colour coat associated genes and 20\nmicrosatellite loci in twenty wild-type and four red leopards. The\nresults were combined with demographic data available from our study\nsites. We found that red leopards own a haplotype in homozygosity\nidentified by one non-synonymous SNP and a 1 bp deletion that causes a\nframeshift in the Tyrosinase Related Protein 1 (TYRP1), a gene known to\nbe involved in the biosynthesis of melanin. Microsatellite analyses\nindicate clear signs of a population bottleneck and a relatedness of\n0.11 among all pairwise relationships, eventually supporting our\nhypothesis that a rare colour morph in the wild has increased its local\nfrequency due to low natal dispersal. This was backed by a high\nhuman-induced mortality rate (40%).<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.22541\/au.170670669.99482987\/v1","type":"posted-content","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,1,31]],"date-time":"2024-01-31T13:11:47Z","timestamp":1706706707000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Molecular tracking and prevalence of the red colour morph restricted to a harvested leopard population in South Africa"],"prefix":"10.22541","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-9333-4955","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Laura","family":"Tensen","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"University Koblenz Landau Institute for Integrated Natural Sciences"}]},{"given":"Gerrie","family":"Camacho","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency"}]},{"given":"John","family":"Power","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-4260-4799","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Raquel","family":"Godinho","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Porto"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-5334-5358","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Bettine van","family":"Vuuren","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Johannesburg Faculty of Science"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2871-246X","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Klaus","family":"Fischer","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"University Koblenz Landau Institute for Integrated Natural Sciences"}]}],"member":"311","container-title":[],"original-title":[],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2024,1,31]],"date-time":"2024-01-31T13:11:47Z","timestamp":1706706707000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.authorea.com\/users\/696732\/articles\/713464-molecular-tracking-and-prevalence-of-the-red-colour-morph-restricted-to-a-harvested-leopard-population-in-south-africa?commit=121d8fa81d1be0b4758468b2efcb8a4ba8789be6"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2024,1,31]]},"references-count":0,"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.22541\/au.170670669.99482987\/v1","relation":{},"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2024,1,31]]},"subtype":"preprint"}}