Lack of introgression of Japanese quail in a captive population of common quail

Farm-reared quails are released to the wild in Europe in vast numbers every year to increase hunting bag quotas. Experimental studies indicate that rather than the native common quail (Coturnix coturnix), the restocking is often done with domestic Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) or with hybrids of domestic Japanese quail and common quail. Such practices are thought to be a severe threat for the native species as it could lead to introgression of domestic Japanese quail alleles into the wild common quail genome and potentially alter the migratory and reproductive behaviour in wild populations. In this study, we assessed the genetic purity of a captive population of common quail that was established from wild-caught founders caught on the Southern Italian coast in Sicily (Italy). We evaluated the proportion of ancestry to common and Japanese quail in this captive population via genetic screening using nuclear microsatellite markers and mitochondrial DNA analyses. We showed that the captive farm quail in our study had no sign of admixture with domestic Japanese quail and had similar genotype frequencies relative to wild common quail, confirming the success of the breeding programme for the native species. We propose that raising common quails in captivity for restocking purposes rather than domestic Japanese quails or hybrids would be a feasible alternative that could minimise the risk of genetic pollution of wild common quail populations.

Open access funding provided by University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna. This work was supported by a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship to VM (704582) and start-up funds from the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna to LF. We are most grateful to Antonio Console and Gianni Pola (Istituto Sperimentale Zootecnico per la Sicilia, Palermo) for giving us access to the animal facility and for their support for performing the experiment. We thank Antoine Stier (supported by a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship, 658085; University of Glasgow, UK) for providing the Japanese quail samples. We also thank José Domingo Rodríguez-Teijeiro and Manel Puigcerver (University of Barcelona, Spain) for providing the wild common quail samples; funding resources that supported their sampling came from The Catalan Government (Generalitat de Catalunya, Departament d’Universitats, Recerca i Societat de la Informació, 2005SGR00090 DURSI project, and Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca, 2009SGR481 project) and the Euskadi Hunting Federation (Federación de Caza de Euskadi).