Does anybody know the source of info 'indian and african cheetah are so geneticaly similar, that mixing should not be a problem' mentioned in the news?
I assume - though not 100% sure - that the source is Dr. Stephen O"Brien. He is a reknowned US geneticist and somehow well-connected.
However, having said that, he is the author of the ill-fated suggestion that most African leopard should be assigned to one subspecies and lumping the entire myriad of subspecies of Middle Eastern origin to one subspecies. It has since been shown genetically that his findings had been wrong and based on small and very incomplete sample sizes. I always keep underlining in any genetics research that you while researching genetics you cannot never ignore significant morphological, bio-geographical and taxonomic differences between subspecies (the classic kulan-onager is an example of bio-geographical separation - where genetics has not yet been able to discern genetic differences).
In the case of the cheetah conventional wisdom had it that all cheetah had been through a genetic bottleneck and therefore genetically pretty much homogenic and hence vulnerable to zoonotic diseases and reduced survivability. It has since been shown to be complete ballony as it was based upon research of southern African cheetah alone (the E.African sample included was hideously small and totally insufficient) and thankfully we now have separate breeding programmes for southern and N-E African cheetah. I will make a case here for continual separation for the Saharan, E.African cheetah and the Asiatic cheetah.
Note 1: I know of no in-depth genetics studies into representative samples of E.African cheetah, Saharan cheetah or Asiatic cheetah. It is certainly a priority ... but I am convinced that when done it will allign with my conviction outlined in the last part of the last paragraph.
Note 2: There has not even been any museum studies of Indian cheetah in natural history collections and even if it had it would have to have been supported by comparative studies in other natural history collections on known Asiatic cheetahs. Historical genetics research on Asiatic cheetah again - to my knowledge - has never been attempted.
I can not phantom what possesses respected scientists to make incorrect or even down-right inaccurate claims as has been done over the Indian cheetah reintroduction project and to somehow imply that there is no difference between Asiatic and African cheetah. This not only goes for the US involvement, but equally for the Indian side (+ the Iranians have previously politely refused to hand over some Asiatic cheetah ... not surprising since the source population is so small and first needs to be recovered ... before we can even hope to take the subspecies elsewhere).
