Extensive genome introgression between domestic ferret and European polecat during population recovery in Great Britain
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The European polecat (Mustela putorius) is a mammalian predator which occurs across much of Europe east to the Ural Mountains. In Great Britain, following years of persecution the range of the European polecat contracted and by the early 1900s was restricted to unmanaged forests of central Wales. The European polecat has recently undergone a population increase due to legal protection and its range now overlaps that of feral domestic ferrets (Mustela putorius furo). During this range expansion, European polecats hybridized with feral domestic ferrets producing viable offspring. Here, we carry out population-level whole-genome sequencing on 8 domestic ferrets, 19 British European polecats, and 15 European polecats from the European mainland. We used a range of population genomics methods to examine the data, including phylogenetics, phylogenetic graphs, model-based clustering, phylogenetic invariants, ABBA-BABA tests, topology weighting, and Fst. We found high degrees of genome introgression in British polecats outside their previous stronghold, even in those individuals phenotyped as "pure" polecats. These polecats ranged from presumed F1 hybrids (gamma = 0.53) to individuals that were much less introgressed (gamma = 0.2). We quantify this introgression and find introgressed genes containing Fst outliers associated with cognitive function and sight.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".