Phylogeography of Wild goat (Capra aegagrus Erxleben, 1777) Using Mitochondrial DNA in Iran

Capra aegagrus is one of the most important mammals of Iran and because of its wide distribution and the existence of different populations of this species in the country, surveying the genetic and geographical distance of different populations and their relationships can play an important role in protecting the remaining populations. In this research 481 base pairs of mtDNA control region from 343 samples of Wild goat was surveyed to determine the phylogeographic status of this species. The results of the phylogenetic tree and phylogeographic analysis of nested clade showed that there are seven expanded clade in the country and there is also an extensive gene flow between populations and population expansion has been occured between some of the clades; But the existance of different samples in the most of identified clades showed a strong relationship and a relatively weak phylogeographic structure for the entire population of Capra aegagrus in Iran. The AMOVA results showed that the percentage variance between different regions is lower than the percentage variance in each region which this is consistent with the results of Mantel test. These findings show that there are complex structure and relationships between Capra aegagruses in Iran and a strong gene flow had been occurred between populations in the past, and natural accidents had not significant role on limiting the gene flow between population which more over the high movement power of the species, one of the most important reason might be related to human intervention during the process of domestication.