GENETIC CHARACTERISATION OF OLIVE BABOON (Papio anubis) IN NEW BUSSA, NIGER STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

Olive baboons (Papio anubis); the most widely distributed non-human primate in central and Sub-Saharan Africa are subjects of public and scientific fascination because they occupy a unique place in evolutionary biology and ecology. The mitochondrial cytochrome C oxidase subunit I (COI) gene has been used as a powerful marker for identification and phylogenetic studies of animal species. In this study, I extracted deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) from blood samples collected from two papio anubis in North central, Nigeria. The genome organization revealed the overall base composition of Papio anubis mitogenome to be: 31.8% Adenine, 25.8% Thymine, 29.7% Cytosine, 12.7% Guanine. The A+T content (57.6%) was higher than the G+C content (42.4%). Evolutionary pattern of partial mitochondrial COI gene sequence of P1WENigeria and P3NC3Nigeria were checked with 9 other COI sequences that were downloaded from National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI); with Theropithecus gelada as an outgroup. The neighbor-joining method was used to construct a phylogenetic tree which clearly separates the P. anubis species into three clustered groups based on their genetic distance and eight distinct clades based on their genetic relatedness. Evolutionary sequence divergence of p – distance ranged from 0.004 to 0.035. The average haplotype diversity and nucleotide diversity over all populations were estimated to be 1.008 and 0.052 respectively. Statistics of neutrality test and demographic history revealed nonsignificant positive values (P>0.05) for Fu’s Fs and non-significant negative values for Tajima’s D; indicating a stable demographic history. Our analyses showed significant genetic differentiation among the P. anubis across all of the geographical location with low haplotype and genotype diversity; which is as a result of introgression and low level of gene flow. Identification of P. anubis species and papios in general based on morphological characteristics should be complemented with molecular methods of identification as some species such as cryptic species are morphologically identical but genetically different.