Date of Award

5-2018

Document Type

Thesis

Primary Advisor

Dale Hembree

Secondary Advisor

Bryan E. Brokaw

Committee Reader

Joshua Brokaw

Abstract

The Abilene Christian University feral cat population has been the subject of many different studies throughout the years, especially those that focus on the presence and spread of diseases in the population that have potential to be zoonotic. The ACU Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) program captures the feral cats to be neutered and also draws blood samples from each. Extracting and purifying of the DNA from these samples allows for disease testing and sequencing of specific genes. In a preliminary study, we used gene sequences from the mitochondrial D-loop to test the effectiveness of the TNR program maintained by the school and found lower levels of genetic diversity in the ACU population than in randomly sampled cats from the greater Abilene region. Expanding on this, sequences for the mitochondrial enzyme ATPase 8/6 will allow for increased sensitivity in the analysis of genetic diversity of the animals in the population. Comparison of the genetic differences or similarities among the cats using DNA haplotype charts can help determine the effectiveness of the TNR program by assessing its impact on inbreeding and migration within the ACU feral cat population.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.