Features of cluster analysis based on the frequencies of erythrocyte antigens of pig blood groups

This work is devoted to evaluating the effectiveness of various methods for calculating distances based on the frequencies of alleles of erythrocyte antigens of blood groups for phylogenetic cluster analysis of pig populations. The aim was to compare the accuracy and adequacy of various distance metrics when restoring previously known kinship relationships between groups of domestic and wild pigs. The analysis involved the distances of Euclid, Manhattan, Canberra, Chebyshev, as well as the specialized genetic distances of Ney, Edwards, Rogers, Prevost, and Reynolds. 12 populations were used as research objects, including mini pigs of ICiG SB RAS, large white breed, Landrace, Kemerovo breed, as well as various subspecies of wild boar. An external assessment based on the known genealogical history of the populations was used to validate the results. The accuracy of the methods was assessed using Spearman’s correlation between distance and kinship ranks. The results showed that most of the tested distances show weak or moderate correlation with real phylogenetic relationships. Dendrograms based on various metrics often grouped unrelated populations together and did not reflect the expected clustering by origin. It has been hypothesized that this is due to the relatively low level of polymorphism of erythrocyte antigens of blood groups compared with such modern markers as microsatellites or SNPs. It is concluded that the frequencies of alleles of erythrocyte antigens of blood groups are unsuitable for accurate reconstruction of phylogenetic relationships between pig populations.

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