4.8. Variation in the CR1 sequence

The CR of the mtDNA of the grey partridge consisted of 1151 nucleotides (VI). Two basic mtDNA lineages were detected, hereafter named “eastern, E” and “western, W”, with a disparity of 25 nucleotides (2.2 %). There was a difference of 14 nucleotides (3.6 %) in the CR1 between the lineages. The read 390 nucleotides of the sequences included 49 (12.6 %) variable sites, of which 24 (49.0 %) were phylogenetically informative. One insertion/deletion was found in position 77 (VI, Appendix). From the 227 analysed grey partridges 45 CR1 haplotypes were identified (VI, Table 3, Fig. 2, Appendix). Both lineages included one basic haplotype (VI, Table 3, Fig. 2).

In both lineages the haplotype diversity (h) among populations varied greatly, from 0.00000 (GE1) to 0.90000 (GE2) (VI, Table 4). The lowest nucleotide diversity (π ) was 0.00000 (GE1) and highest 0.01902 (BUL and IRE). θ s values estimated from the number of polymorphic nucleotide sites per nucleotide, were in concordance with the values of π (VI, Table 4). Within the western lineage, the maximum Jukes-Cantor (1969) pairwise genetic distance was found between W19 from England and W21 from an Italian farm. Within the eastern lineage the maximum distance was found between E9 from Sweden and E14 from Bulgaria, and from E6, Southern Finland, as well as between E14 and E6. For the whole data the maximum distance was found between W17 from England and E13 from Bulgaria.