Abstract
| - The scientific literature on cat genetics contains a presumed typical example of natural selection affecting I frequencies (long hair) in 16 Brazilian cat populations. It has been observed that the hotter and more tropical the climate in Brazil, the lower the values of I frequencies in the cat populations. Nevertheless, this study of some new cat populations in Latin America showed that all of them, independent of the climate, had high or very high I frequencies. I postulate that an alternative migrational-historical hypothesis exists that explains the correlation between the I frequencies and climate characteristics (which are correlated with the latitude) without using natural selection explanations concerning the appearance of the I allele in Brazil.
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