Actually:
Quote:
|
Since 1930, only a few golden hamsters have been caught in their natural distribution area in Syria and Turkey. All those animals failed to breed and therefore the original gene pool has not been generally affected until now (Gattermann e t al. 2001 ).
|
From
here.
Quote:
|
The entire laboratory population of golden hamsters originated from a single brother-sister pairing in 1930 (Aharoni, 1932) with the exception of 12 wild animals brought to the U.S.A. in 1971 (Murphy, 1985).
|
From
here. There doesn't appear to be any evidence that the animals captured in 1971 were bred with the domestic lab population (
link). (The "Murphy, 1985" above is a reference to Murphy's
book, and since he was the one that acquired the hamsters in 1971, I think it's safe to say that if he bred his animals into the general domestic population, he would have mentioned it. Unfortunately I can't find an online copy of his book.)
I also have found many references to all domestic Syrians being descended from the same female, as proven by analysis of mitochondrial DNA. Again, I can't find an actual paper on this, but so many places reference it I'm going to assume the paper actually does exist.
Furthermore:
Quote:
|
Genetic tests revealed a reduced number of alleles (2.5 0.3 vs 7.8 0.6) and a low degree of observed heterozygosity (0.15 0.05 vs 0.69 0.03) in laboratory strains (Fritzsche e t a l. 2000a)
|
ie, there is far less genetic diversity in lab/domestic Syrians than there are in the wild. Basically, there is actually a genetic bottleneck in Syrians. (I feel dirty quoting wikipedia, but it actually
states "The golden hamster is a similarly bottlenecked species".)
Unfortunately, the paper referenced once again isn't available (I can only find as far back as
volume 104 online, and I want volume 103). I can't even find an abstract!
Up until 1999, at least, I can't find any evidence that new blood was added to the original population descended from the hamsters in 1930. I also doubt that the new population created in 1999 were interbred with the domestic population, but I am tired and can't be bothered to research more
