Xian Li¹ , Qibin Xu²

1 Tropical Animal Resources Research Center, Hainan Institute of Tropical Agricultural Resources, Sanya, 572025, Hainan, China
2 Animal Science Research Center, Cuixi Academy of Biotechnology, Zhuji, 311800, Zhejiang, China
Author    Correspondence author
International Journal of Molecular Ecology and Conservation, 2025, Vol. 15, No. 2   
Received: 09 Feb., 2025    Accepted: 12 Mar., 2025    Published: 24 Mar., 2025

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Having a perception of how domestic and wild ducks (Anas genus) adapt to climatic zones is extremely significant to evolutionary biology as well as conservation of species. In the present work, the study examines systematically the population structure and genetic adaptation of ducks common in tropical, temperate, and cold regions. By integrating mitochondrial and nuclear DNA data, we reconstructed phylogenetic relationships, estimated the times of lineage divergence, and compared genetic lineage diversity in domestic duck breeds and their wild relatives. The findings revealed clear genetic structuring across populations from different geographic regions, which reflects previous domestication events as well as ongoing gene flow. In addition, we identified genomic signatures of environmental adaptation, which comprised functional genes known to play roles in thermoregulation, metabolism, and immune response. Ecological niche modeling and spatial analysis based on GIS also evidenced that the genetic differentiation patterns are influenced by geographical discontinuity and climatic heterogeneity. The study bears witness to the evolutionary flexibility of ducks and establishes the value of molecular ecology for biodiversity conservation and adaptive management, and offers a scientific basis for the sustainable use and conservation of waterfowl resources under global climate change.

Population structure; Genetic adaptation; Ducks (Anas genus); Phylogeography; Climate-driven evolution