The abstract is read at the publisher; the summary is JClub's.
Dog-assisted scat surveys genotyped 130 black-footed cat (Felis nigripes) samples from two African populations, revealing 65 individuals with low but detectable differentiation (FST = 0.03–0.05).
- Why it matters: Conventional sampling is largely ineffective for this threatened, range-restricted felid, leaving dispersal, mating, and fine-scale structure poorly resolved in Africa.
- What they did: Researchers collected scat using conservation detection dogs, genotyped nine microsatellite loci, and estimated diversity (Ho = 0.67–0.69; FIS = -0.02 to -0.08) plus pairwise relatedness and candidate pedigrees.
- The result: Female-female dyads were more related than male-male dyads at 0–2 km, and pedigree patterns showed more half-sibling than full-sibling assignments, suggesting polygamy and reproductive skew.
The findingWhy it mattersWhat they didThe result
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