| 研究実績の概要 |
From May to August 2022, a research trip was made to Peninsular Malaysia to conduct microsatellite analysis of 41 wild tapir samples using 38 novel microsatellite markers developed in this study. Genomic analyses of six Malayan tapirs from Japan institutions, each two with putative origins from Peninsular Malaysia, Thailand, and Sumatra, was conducted to infer the changes in historical effective population size that was as low as 2000-4000 upon entering Holocene and a population split between the mainland Southeast Asia and Sumatran populations >10k years ago. Using the six genomes and two public genomes, a custom panel of 24k single nucleotide polymorphism was developed, which targets mutations that are of moderate to high impacts to the gene functions. It was found that Sumatran samples showed a significantly higher loss-of-function mutations than the Peninsular Malaysian- and Thailand-origin samples. Malaysian and Sumatran samples also show higher inbreeding coefficients from the analysis of runs of homozygosity. More samples are required to clarify this. These results were presented three international conferences and a best poster prize was won. A scientific article was published in Global Ecology and Conservation. A Wildlife Conservation and Bioinformatics Workshop was held in March 2023. A Malaysian government wildlife research officer was invited to Japan to participate in the workshop as a mean for capacity building and for fostering the research connection between Wildlife Research Center of Kyoto University and the department of wildlife in Peninsular Malaysia.
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