Chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra) introductions were popular at the beginning of the 20th century when first animals were shipped from Austria to the Czech Republic and New Zealand. The historical record of the Czech introduction indicates Neuberg Mürzsteg Game Reserve in Eastern Alps, Styria, Austria as the main area of origin of founders. First animals for the New Zealand population are thought to have originated from Ebensee, Upper Austria, Austria and later more animals came from the Mürzsteg region. We sequenced mitochondrial control region of chamois from the introduced populations and their putative source areas, and we applied median-joining networks and Bayesian inference analysis to distinguish the regions of origin of female founders. We found the Mürzsteg region as the most likely source population for introductions to the Czech Republic and New Zealand, supplemented with close association with sequences from Ebensee in populations from the Czech Republic. Genetic diversity present in the Czech Republic was further relocated to the introduced populations in Slovakia in the 1960’s.
The only autochthonous population of Tatra chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra tatrica) occurs in the Tatra Mountains (northern Slovakia and southern Poland). Another population has been introduced to the Low Tatra Mts., while Alpine chamois (R. r. rupicapra) has been introduced to the neighbouring mountain ranges, Veľká Fatra and Slovenský raj. All these populations have undergone intensive bottlenecks. Any resulting low genetic variability would mean that only few genetic markers could be used for population genetic studies due to prevailing monomorphism. We tested 65 markers previously used in chamois or other Caprinae species, from which 20 most suitable loci for noninvasive genetic study of the Tatra chamois were selected. These polymorphic loci were used for optimisation of three multiplex sets and revealed a mean number of alleles of 2.1 and mean expected heterozygosity of 0.331 for the Tatra population. Low genetic diversity was also observed in the Low Tatra population while slightly higher values were obtained for Alpine chamois population in Slovenský raj. We subsequently assessed the amplification success rate for noninvasively obtained samples (faeces), which ranged from 85.1% to 92.7% for particular loci. The developed polymorphic microsatellite sets provide a unique tool for population genetic study of the endangered Tatra chamois, even when using noninvasive sampling, and is also suitable for Alpine chamois.