Populations of the common chimpanzee ( Pan troglodytes ) are in an impending risk of going extinct in the wild as a consequence of damaging anthropogenic impact on their natural habitat and illegal pet and bushmeat trade. Conservation management programmes for the chimpanzee have been established outside their natural range (ex situ), and chimpanzees from these programmes could potentially be used to supplement future conservation initiatives in the wild (in situ). However, these programmes have often suffered from inadequate information about the geographical origin and subspecies ancestry of the founders. Here, we present a newly designed capture array with ~60,000 ancestry informative markers used to infer ancestry of individual chimpanzees in ex situ populations and determine geographical origin of confiscated sanctuary individuals. From a test panel of 167 chimpanzees with unknown origins or subspecies labels, we identify 90 suitable non-admixed individuals in the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA) Ex situ Programme (EEP). Equally important, another 46 individuals have been identified with admixed subspecies ancestries, which therefore over time, should be naturally phased out of the breeding populations. With potential for future re-introduction to the wild, we determine the geographical origin of 31 individuals that were confiscated from the illegal trade and demonstrate the promises of using non-invasive sampling in future conservation action plans. Collectively, our genomic approach provides an exemplar for ex situ management of endangered species and offers an efficient tool in future in situ efforts to combat the illegal wildlife trade.

中文翻译：

---

濒危黑猩猩的靶向保护遗传学

由于人为对其自然栖息地的破坏性影响以及非法的宠物和丛林肉贸易，普通黑猩猩（Pan troglodytes）的种群在野外面临灭绝的迫在眉睫的风险。黑猩猩的保护管理计划已经在其自然范围（异地）之外建立，这些计划中的黑猩猩有可能被用来补充未来的野外（就地）保护计划。然而，这些计划经常受到关于创始人的地理起源和亚种血统的信息不足的困扰。在这里，我们提出了一个新设计的捕获阵列，其中包含约 60,000 个祖先信息标记，用于推断迁地种群中个体黑猩猩的祖先，并确定被没收的保护区个体的地理起源。从 167 只未知来源或亚种标签的黑猩猩的测试小组中，我们在欧洲动物园和水族馆协会 (EAZA) 易地计划 (EEP) 中确定了 90 只合适的非混合个体。同样重要的是，另外 46 只个体被确定为具有混合亚种祖先，因此随着时间的推移，它们应该自然地被淘汰出繁殖种群。由于未来有可能重新引入野外，我们确定了从非法贸易中没收的 31 个人的地理来源，并证明了在未来保护行动计划中使用非侵入性采样的前景。总的来说，我们的基因组方法为濒危物种的异地管理提供了一个范例，并为未来打击非法野生动物贸易的就地努力提供了一个有效的工具。