The research team, led by Binod Kunwar and colleagues, combined two powerful modeling approaches: species distribution modeling using the Maximum Entropy algorithm, known as MaxEnt, and landscape connectivity analysis using least-cost pathways. The study drew on three years of intensive fieldwork between 2023 and 2025, during which 120 camera traps were deployed across Jeju Island in a systematic 1-by-1-kilometer grid. Each trap, positioned at least 30 meters from its neighbors, recorded bursts of three 20-megapixel photographs followed by 30 seconds of video whenever its passive infrared sensors detected movement. Combined with opportunistic sightings and field signs such as rubbing trees, feces, wallowing, and soil rooting, the surveys yielded 94 georeferenced wild boar occurrences, which were spatially filtered so that only one record was retained per 30-by-30-meter grid cell.

The environmental backbone of the model consisted of ten carefully selected variables, all resampled to a crisp 30-meter resolution. These included Euclidean distances to built-up areas, agriculture, forest, barren land, and water, all derived from the Ministry of Environment’s high-resolution land cover data, alongside elevation, slope, and a terrain ruggedness index calculated from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission digital elevation model. Satellite-derived indices added another layer of ecological detail: the normalized difference vegetation index captured vegetation greenness, the modified normalized difference water index detected open water, and the normalized difference built-up index quantified development. Spearman’s rank correlation analysis screened out redundant variables, ensuring that multicollinearity would not distort the model’s predictions. To correct for uneven sampling intensity, the team generated a Gaussian kernel density from the occurrence records and used it to probabilistically draw 10,000 bias-weighted background points.

Rather than accepting MaxEnt’s default settings, the researchers tuned the model exhaustively, testing combinations of linear, quadratic, hinge, and product feature classes against regularization multipliers ranging from 0.5 to 5. The configuration that minimized the Akaike Information Criterion, a measure that balances goodness of fit against model complexity, emerged as the winner: linear, quadratic, and hinge features with a beta multiplier of 2.5. The final model, run in ten replicates with 70 percent of data for training and 30 percent for testing, delivered strong performance metrics, with an area under the curve of 0.76, a True Skill Statistic of 0.46, and a Continuous Boyce Index of 0.82, indicating reliable discrimination between suitable and unsuitable habitat.

The results were striking. Wild boar potential habitat covers 661.82 square kilometers, roughly 36 percent of Jeju Island’s entire surface. Of this, 265 square kilometers qualify as highly suitable and 396 square kilometers as moderately suitable. More than half of Hallasan National Park, the island’s ecological crown jewel with its unique vertical ecosystems, was projected as potential wild boar habitat, a finding that raises serious conservation concerns for the park’s native flora and fauna. The habitat overlapped overwhelmingly with forest, which accounted for nearly 62 percent of predicted suitable areas, followed by grassland at 28 percent. Notably, built-up areas also contributed to suitable habitat, underscoring the species’ notorious ecological flexibility and its capacity to thrive in human-modified environments.

Which environmental factors matter most? Distance to agriculture dominated the model, contributing a permutation importance of 0.64, far ahead of distance to built-up areas at 0.22, elevation at 0.14, and distance to water at 0.13. The response curves tell a vivid story: wild boar suitability rises sharply within 500 meters of agricultural land, reflecting the abundance and easy accessibility of forage in crop fields, and remains elevated near human settlements, a behavioral adaptation that inevitably increases the risk of human-wildlife conflict. The animals showed a strong preference for low elevations between sea level and 500 meters, moderately rugged terrain, proximity to forests that provide forage, shelter, and thermal refuge, and nearby water sources, with suitability declining exponentially as distance to inland water increases. Dense vegetation, indicated by NDVI values around 0.6, further enhanced habitat quality, likely offering both food and concealment.

Beyond mapping where the boars are, the study tackled a question that is arguably more important for management: how connected are their populations? The team converted the habitat suitability surface into a landscape resistance model using a nonlinear transformation calibrated for ecologically plastic species, then identified six core habitat patches larger than 3 square kilometers, a threshold based on known wild boar home range sizes. Patches separated by less than a kilometer, within the daily movement capacity of the animals, were merged. The result was a network of six patches totaling 181.51 square kilometers, dominated by the vast Hallasan patch at 123.88 square kilometers, with smaller strongholds at Saekdal-dong, Manjanggul, Geumakseo-gil, Gotjwal, and Aewol.

Least-cost pathway analysis revealed eight linkages threading through the island’s landscape. The mean least-cost path between patches stretched 11.41 kilometers, with individual corridors ranging from a short 1.92-kilometer hop between Geumakseo-gil and Gotjwal to a demanding 12.23-kilometer route between Saekdal-dong and Gotjwal. Connectivity was weakest between the Manjanggul area and Hallasan, where high landscape resistance impedes movement, while the Saekdal-dong area emerged as the most permeable landscape. Centrality analysis, which measures each patch’s contribution to overall network connectivity, crowned the Hallasan and Geumakseo-gil areas as the linchpins of the entire system. The corridor connecting Hallasan to Saekdal-dong, traversing mountainous forest, proved the most robust pathway, consistent with the species’ documented affinity for forested cover that offers food, shelter, and reduced human disturbance.

The practical implications are considerable. By pinpointing the corridors and core patches that sustain the invasion, the study gives South Korean managers a strategic map for intervention: targeted population monitoring, focused removal efforts, strategic fencing, and habitat modification concentrated where they will do the most good. Similar approaches, integrating fencing with population control along key movement routes, have been deployed in European countries grappling with expanding boar populations and the looming threat of African swine fever, though their success depends heavily on fence design, maintenance, and landscape configuration. On an island free of large predators and harboring four invasive mammal species, including sika deer and Siberian chipmunks, such spatially informed strategies may be the best hope for protecting Jeju’s vulnerable native ecosystems.

The authors are candid about their model’s limitations. Climatic variables were excluded because downscaling them to the island’s fine spatial scale would have introduced additional uncertainty, and independent validation of the connectivity analysis was not performed. Small, isolated habitat patches, which may serve as stopover sites, were left out of the network. Least-cost modeling identifies optimal pathways but cannot fully capture the stochastic, dynamic nature of real animal dispersal. The researchers recommend that future work integrate telemetry-based movement data, long-term population monitoring, and genetic assessments of gene flow to validate and refine the picture. Even so, the study stands as a template for proactive invasive species management: by predicting where an invader will thrive and how it will spread before it does, conservationists gain the precious commodity of time, and on an island as ecologically isolated and biodiverse as Jeju, time is everything.

Subject of Research: Habitat suitability and landscape connectivity modeling of invasive wild boar on Jeju Island, South Korea

Article Title: Modeling the Invasion: Habitat Suitability and Landscape Connectivity of Wild Boar (Sus scrofa) on Jeju Island, South Korea

Article References: Kunwar, B., Baral, S., Jeong, Y.-H., & Oh, H.-S. (2026). Modeling the Invasion: Habitat Suitability and Landscape Connectivity of Wild Boar ( Sus scrofa ) on Jeju Island, South Korea. Ecology and Evolution, 16(10), Article e74398. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.74398

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1002/ece3.74398

Keywords: wild boar, invasive species, Jeju Island, species distribution modeling, MaxEnt, landscape connectivity, least-cost pathways, habitat suitability, Hallasan National Park, island ecology, human-wildlife conflict, South Korea

The research team, led by Hikaru Ogi and Yoko Ichikawa of the University of Shizuoka together with colleagues at Tokoha University and Sagami Women’s University, obtained heart, stomach, liver, spleen, small intestine, large intestine, loin, and round samples from five wild-caught female sika deer and five wild-caught female wild boar, each estimated at three years of age, processed at a licensed facility in western Shizuoka Prefecture. The animals had been captured by licensed hunters as part of legally authorized population management, entirely independently of the study. For comparison, the researchers purchased matching tissues from three cattle and three pigs from a Shizuoka meat supplier. All samples were freeze-dried, pulverized, and stored frozen before analysis.

To simulate what happens when meat is cooked and eaten, the team applied a standardized in vitro digestion pipeline. Half a gram of each freeze-dried sample was mechanically disrupted with beads, heated at 70 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes to mimic cooking, and then subjected to two hours of gastric digestion with pepsin at pH 1.8, followed by two hours of intestinal digestion with trypsin and pancreatin. Enzymes were added at a nominal enzyme-to-protein ratio of 1:1,000, with the protein estimate derived from ultraviolet absorbance at 280 nanometers. After digestion, enzymes were heat-inactivated, and the soluble fraction was filtered for analysis. This common framework meant that every tissue from every species passed through exactly the same cooking and digestive gauntlet, allowing apples-to-apples comparisons across thirty-two species-tissue combinations.

The researchers measured three things: how much soluble protein and peptide material each digest released, how effectively that material scavenged DPPH free radicals, and how strongly it inhibited angiotensin-converting enzyme, or ACE, the enzyme that raises blood pressure. Soluble protein and peptide concentrations were estimated using the Waddell spectrophotometric method, which calculates concentration from the difference in absorbance at 215 and 225 nanometers. Both biological activities were expressed as IC50 values, the concentration of estimated soluble protein or peptide needed to achieve fifty percent of maximal effect, with lower values indicating greater potency. Statistical comparisons used Kruskal-Wallis tests followed by Dunn’s multiple-comparison tests with Holm adjustment, treating each tissue-outcome pair as a separate exploratory endpoint.

The yield results were strikingly tissue dependent. Wild boar stomach released roughly 27 milligrams of estimated soluble protein or peptide per gram of wet tissue, nearly triple the roughly 10 milligrams from sika deer stomach. Wild boar liver yielded about 34 milligrams per gram, significantly more than both sika deer liver at around 11 and cattle liver at under 10. Wild boar round outperformed pig round by nearly sevenfold, at about 34 versus 5 milligrams per gram. Yet the pattern reversed elsewhere: wild boar small intestine yielded less soluble material than pig small intestine, and sika deer spleen yielded less than both wild boar and cattle spleen. No significant differences appeared in heart or large intestine. An enzyme-only blank run through the same procedure produced a negligible concentration of 0.059 milligrams per milliliter, suggesting the digestive enzymes themselves contributed little to the measured signal.

When it came to antioxidant activity, wild boar emerged as the clear winner. The DPPH IC50 for wild boar liver digest was 9.38 milligrams per milliliter, significantly lower than the 44.02 milligrams per milliliter observed for cattle liver, meaning far less material was needed to neutralize half of the synthetic radicals. Wild boar loin also outperformed, with an IC50 of 16.53 milligrams per milliliter compared with 35.82 for sika deer loin and 58.10 for cattle loin. These findings align with a growing body of literature showing that meat proteins generate antioxidant peptides during digestion, and that such peptides are rich in hydrophobic and aromatic amino acids like leucine, tryptophan, and histidine, which can donate electrons or hydrogen atoms to radicals. The authors caution, however, that because sample-specific absorbance at 520 nanometers was not corrected with blanks, pigments in colored visceral digests may have influenced the measurements.

ACE inhibition told a different story. Here the standout was sika deer spleen, whose digest showed an IC50 of 3.10 milligrams per milliliter, significantly lower than the 19.48 milligrams per milliliter of wild boar spleen. Notably, sika deer spleen had produced less soluble material than wild boar spleen, yet inhibited ACE far more potently, a mismatch that underscores a central theme of the study: quantity of digestible protein does not predict bioactivity. ACE-inhibitory potency depends heavily on peptide molecular weight, hydrophobicity, charge, and especially the amino acid sequence near the C-terminus, which determines how well a peptide fits into the enzyme’s active site. Previous work has identified ACE-inhibitory peptides such as KAPVA and PTPVP in pork digests, and antihypertensive effects have been demonstrated in hypertensive rats, so the possibility that wild-game digests contain similar sequences is plausible, though not yet proven.

Indeed, the disconnect between yield and activity is perhaps the study’s most important conceptual contribution. Screening tissues solely on how much soluble protein they release would have missed sika deer spleen, a low-yield, high-activity tissue, and would have overrated others. The authors argue that this justifies activity-guided fractionation as the next step: isolating the active components from wild boar liver, wild boar loin, and sika deer spleen, identifying peptide sequences by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, confirming activity with synthetic peptides, and eventually testing physiological effects in cells and animals. For a peptide to lower blood pressure in a living body, it must survive intestinal digestion, cross the epithelial barrier, remain stable in circulation, and reach its target, hurdles that many in vitro hits never clear.

The study is candid about its limitations. Sample sizes were small and unequal, with five wild animals but only three cattle and three pigs per tissue, limiting statistical power, and non-significant comparisons cannot be read as evidence of equivalence. The wild and domesticated groups also differed in diet, rearing conditions, and postmortem handling, so differences cannot be attributed to species alone. Enzyme dosing was based on an absorbance estimate rather than a direct protein measurement, the Waddell method can be confounded by UV-absorbing compounds in organ digests, and no reference compounds like Trolox or captopril were run alongside. Some undiluted samples even produced calculated ACE inhibition above one hundred percent, though IC50 values were computed only from concentrations bracketing the fifty percent mark.

Even with those caveats, the study opens a genuinely novel avenue. Japan’s deer and boar culls produce a vast, underused biomass, and if organs like wild boar liver or deer spleen can be shown to contain functional peptides, they could become ingredients for health-oriented foods rather than waste. The authors are explicit that this was a screening exercise, not a demonstration of health benefits, but it provides the systematic baseline that future characterization work can build on. In a country grappling simultaneously with wildlife overpopulation, food sustainability, and an aging population’s cardiovascular health, the idea that pest control could feed a functional-food industry is exactly the kind of unexpected connection that makes food science worth watching.

Subject of Research: Bioactive peptide yield and antioxidant and ACE-inhibitory activities of in vitro digests of wild sika deer and wild boar tissues compared with cattle and pig tissues in Japan

Article Title: Exploratory screening of wild-game tissues in Japan toward value-added utilization: estimated soluble protein/peptide yields and DPPH radical-scavenging and ACE-inhibitory activities after in vitro digestion

Article References: Exploratory screening of wild-game tissues in Japan toward value-added utilization: estimated soluble protein/peptide yields and DPPH radical-scavenging and ACE-inhibitory activities after in vitro digestion. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44463-026-00118-0

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44463-026-00118-0

Keywords: wild game meat, sika deer, wild boar, bioactive peptides, in vitro digestion, DPPH radical scavenging, ACE inhibition, visceral organs, value-added utilization, functional foods, food science, Japan

The research team assembled an unusually powerful resource for dissecting the trait: a population of 932 second-generation offspring produced by intercrossing white Duroc boars with Erhualian sows. Because juvenile striping appears in this intercross population alongside solid-colored animals, the pedigree provided the statistical contrast needed to hunt for the trait’s genetic architecture. The researchers performed genome-wide association studies, or GWAS, using both chip-based genotyping and imputation-based approaches that leverage whole-genome sequence data to fill in millions of additional variants. This dual strategy allowed them to scan the pig genome for DNA markers that reliably track with the presence or absence of stripes across hundreds of animals, a standard technique in quantitative genetics that correlates inherited variation with observable traits.

The scan produced two suggestive association signals, one on pig chromosome 6 and another on chromosome 8. On chromosome 6, the strongest positional candidate was MC1R, the melanocortin 1 receptor gene that sits at the heart of the melanin switching system in mammals. MC1R acts as a molecular dial that determines whether pigment cells produce dark eumelanin or reddish-yellow pheomelanin, and mutations in this gene are responsible for some of the most famous coat color variants in dogs, horses, cattle, and pigs. On chromosome 8, the candidate gene was KIT, a receptor tyrosine kinase gene famous for its role in the migration and survival of pigment-producing cells during embryonic development. KIT disruptions classically produce white spotting patterns, because pigment cell precursors fail to reach their destinations in the skin.

Genotyping of the candidate mutations revealed a striking pattern. The striped pigs in the study did not carry the MC1R c.67_68insCC insertion mutation, and they also lacked the KIT duplication that produces characteristic white patterning in domestic pigs. This tells a coherent story: these two well-known pigment mutations, when present, appear to disrupt or erase the juvenile stripe pattern entirely. But the inverse did not hold. Some animals in the population that lacked both mutations still failed to show stripes, indicating that the presence of a striped coat cannot be explained by these two loci alone. Something else in the genome must be required to switch the stripe program on, prompting the team to dig deeper.

That deeper search took the form of a conditional GWAS, a statistical refinement in which the researchers re-ran the association analysis while accounting for the effects of the already-identified loci. By statistically removing the contribution of the MC1R and KIT regions, the analysis could expose additional genetic signals that had been masked by the stronger effects. This approach uncovered a further genomic locus, again on chromosome 8, and the gene nearest to the new association signal was CORIN. CORIN encodes a membrane-bound serine protease with a well-documented role in pigmentation biology; in other mammals, corin mutations are known to shift the balance of the melanocortin pathway and alter coat color patterning. Its emergence from the conditional analysis suggests that CORIN may act as a modifier that cooperates with the primary pigment genes to permit the striped pattern to develop.

Identifying the genes involved was only half the puzzle. Juvenile striping is fundamentally a spatial phenomenon: neighboring regions of the same dorsal skin follow different pigment programs, producing alternating dark and light bands. To understand how one patch of skin knows to go dark while its neighbor stays light, the team collected skin samples from the dark stripes and light stripes of three 2-day-old striped piglets and subjected them to parallel comparative transcriptome sequencing, or RNA-seq, which measures which genes are active in each tissue. The spatial comparison revealed that TYRP1, tyrosinase-related protein 1, was significantly upregulated in the dark-stripe skin. TYRP1 is an enzyme working directly in the melanin biosynthesis pathway, supporting the production of eumelanin, so its elevated activity in dark bands fits neatly with the visible difference in pigment deposition between the two stripe types.

The most technically ambitious component of the study was its use of ATAC-seq, the assay for transposase-accessible chromatin using sequencing. This method exploits a laboratory enzyme that preferentially inserts sequencing adapters into open, loosely packed stretches of chromatin, thereby creating a genome-wide map of regulatory regions where DNA is physically accessible to transcription factors. Because gene activity is largely controlled by which regulatory switches are open at any given moment, ATAC-seq reveals the layer of regulation that sits above the genome sequence itself. The team profiled accessible chromatin separately in dark-stripe and light-stripe skin, identifying peaks specific to each compartment and quantifying their quality using standard metrics such as the fraction of reads falling within peaks.

That chromatin map delivered a compelling lead. The researchers identified an accessible chromatin region located 1.8 kilobases downstream of the TYRP1 gene, a position consistent with a distal regulatory element such as an enhancer. Enhancers are DNA sequences that can lie far from the gene they control, binding transcription factor proteins and boosting gene expression in specific tissues or, in this case, specific skin territories. The analysis suggested that this downstream accessible region may contain binding sites for SOX10, the SRY-box transcription factor 10, a master regulator of the neural crest lineage from which pigment cells are born. If SOX10 or related factors bind preferentially to this open region in dark-stripe skin, it could explain how TYRP1 expression is boosted in the dark bands while remaining lower in the light ones, providing a plausible molecular mechanism for the spatial patterning of the stripes.

Taken together, the study sketches a layered genetic model of porcine juvenile striping. At the top level, the presence or absence of disruptive pigment mutations matters: the MC1R c.67_68insCC insertion and the KIT duplication appear capable of overriding the stripe program, which is why striped coats vanish from most domestic pig lineages where these mutations have been selected, whether deliberately or incidentally, during breeding. Below that, a conditional locus near CORIN likely contributes to whether the stripe program can be expressed at all in animals free of the disruptive mutations. And at the finest level, the pattern itself is executed through spatially restricted gene regulation, with an accessible chromatin element downstream of TYRP1, potentially controlled by SOX10-family transcription factors, driving higher melanogenic activity in dark-stripe skin than in adjacent light-stripe skin.

The work also demonstrates the power of integrating multiple genomic technologies on a single well-structured population. GWAS pinpointed where in the genome the relevant variation lies, RNA-seq revealed which genes behave differently between the patterned territories, and ATAC-seq illuminated the regulatory landscape that might explain that differential behavior. Each method alone would have left the picture incomplete; the association signals could not say how stripes are patterned, and the expression data could not say why TYRP1 differs between bands. For pig breeders and evolutionary biologists alike, the findings carry practical weight. Understanding which mutations erase juvenile striping clarifies how domestication reshaped coat appearance, and the identification of CORIN and the TYRP1 regulatory region provides molecular markers that could be used to track or manipulate the trait. More broadly, the striped piglet joins the growing list of mammalian color-pattern systems, from zebrafish stripes to big-cat rosettes, in which the interplay of pigment genes and chromatin-level regulation is being decoded base pair by base pair.

Subject of Research: The genetic and molecular mechanisms underlying juvenile stripe coat patterning in pigs

Article Title: Unraveling porcine juvenile striping: insights from the integration of genomics, transcriptomics and ATAC-seq

Article References: Xiong, S., Cui, D., Xiao, S., Li, L., & Guo, Y. (2026). Unraveling porcine juvenile striping: insights from the integration of genomics, transcriptomics and ATAC-seq. BMC Genomics. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-026-13377-4

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12864-026-13377-4

Keywords: juvenile stripes, wild boar, pig genetics, GWAS, MC1R, KIT, CORIN, TYRP1, ATAC-seq, RNA-seq, SOX10, coat color

The research team, led by Le Pham Tan Quoc of the Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City together with collaborators in Vietnam and Hungary, used RStudio with the Bibliometrix package and its Biblioshiny interface, complemented by VOSviewer for network visualization. Their search strategy combined the terms wild boar or Sus scrofa with meat quality, carcass traits, fatty acid, or nutritional composition, and after filtering to original research articles only, the team retained 423 publications for analysis. By applying performance indicators, co-authorship networks, keyword co-occurrence mapping, Multiple Correspondence Analysis, and thematic evolution analysis, the study addressed six core research questions covering publication growth, influential contributors, collaboration patterns, citation impact, dominant themes, and emerging trends.

The historical picture that emerges is striking. The first recorded publication appeared in 1959, but output remained sparse and sporadic through the 1960s and 1980s, when wild boar meat was treated largely as a side topic within wildlife and ecological research. From the mid-1990s, publication numbers began to climb as interest in alternative protein sources grew, and by 2003 the field recorded 18 papers in a single year, marking a transition toward systematic study. Advances in biochemical analytical methods, particularly for determining fatty acid composition, helped drive this shift, alongside rising consumer appetite for game meat as a natural, organic protein source and growing concerns about the environmental footprint of conventional livestock production.

Between 2006 and 2014, the field entered a phase of strong and relatively stable growth, with several years exceeding 20 publications. During this period, studies increasingly focused on the nutritional value, fatty acid profiles, and potential health benefits of wild boar meat compared with commercial pork. The expansion of wild boar populations across Europe also played a role, as wildlife managers sought productive uses for animals that increasingly required population control. From 2015 to 2024, output fluctuated but remained high, with research expanding into sensory quality evaluation, food safety, and the effects of hunting season, geographic region, and semi-wild production systems on meat characteristics.

Compared with intensively farmed pigs, wild boar meat generally shows lower fat content, firmer muscle structure, and higher protein levels. Its fatty acid profile contains higher proportions of polyunsaturated fatty acids, particularly omega-3 and omega-6 varieties, depending on natural feeding conditions and habitat. Quality assessment relies on indicators including pH, color, tenderness, water-holding capacity, fat-to-lean ratio, and sensory traits, while carcass characteristics such as weight, backfat thickness, and loin eye area reflect growth performance and processing potential. These parameters are significantly influenced by sex, age, hunting season, geographic location, and ecological conditions, which helps explain why the field spans so many disciplines and methodologies.

The author-level analysis revealed a highly specialized field shaped by a limited number of core research groups. Geldermann H leads productivity with 21 publications, followed by Bartenschlager H with 20 and Moser G with 16, and these three also top the citation rankings. Yet fractionalized counts, which reflect individual contribution within large collaborations, tell a subtler story: Razmaite V, with 15 publications, achieved the highest fractionalized value of 6.58, indicating a comparatively greater personal contribution, while Groenen M attained the highest average citations per article at 11.70. Journal of Animal Science and Meat Science dominate both productivity and citation impact, and the strong presence of Animal Genetics, Journal of Animal Breeding and Genetics, and Genetics Selection Evolution underscores how tightly meat quality research is bound to quantitative genetics.

Geographically, China leads in total publications, with most classified as single-country publications reflecting strong domestic research capacity, while Germany ranks second with a notably higher proportion of internationally co-authored work. Poland and Italy also contribute substantially, largely through domestic output, and the United States shows a balanced distribution that positions it as a connecting hub in the global network. The authors attribute the strong European presence to high wild boar population densities, long-term pig genetics programs, and policy pressures linked to wildlife management, whereas China’s dominance reflects substantial national investment in agricultural and animal science research.

Perhaps the most compelling finding is the field’s intellectual evolution. Thematic mapping across three periods shows that early research centered on intramuscular fat, carcass traits, and lipid metabolism in domestic pigs, with comparative studies between wild boar and commercial breeds. The middle period from 2011 to 2018 diversified into species identification, skeletal muscle biology, and performance evaluation, while the most recent phase from 2019 to 2026 consolidates around genomic characterization, with terms such as candidate genes, genome-wide association studies, and differentiation between wild and domestic populations taking prominence. Overlay visualization confirms that genetic and genome-mapping terms dominated early periods, while fatty acids, genome scan analysis, and meat quality traits have become increasingly prominent in recent years.

Multiple Correspondence Analysis crystallized this structure into three conceptual pillars that together explain more than 81 percent of the dataset’s variance across two dimensions. The first cluster encompasses genetic improvement and production traits such as growth, quantitative trait loci, and backfat thickness; the second captures molecular genetics, including gene expression, linkage, and candidate gene identification; and the third groups meat quality and lipid characteristics, including muscle composition, fatty acids, and physicochemical properties. The spatial proximity of these clusters in the analysis suggests growing integration between genetics and meat science, even as each direction maintains its own specialized identity.

The study’s authors conclude that wild boar meat research has progressed from foundational studies of carcass traits and lipid metabolism toward advanced genomic and association-based approaches, increasingly framed by nutritional evaluation and the prospect of wild game meat as a sustainable protein source. They note that collaboration networks remain concentrated within specific clusters, leaving room for broader interdisciplinary and international cooperation. Future work, they argue, should integrate multi-omics approaches with meat quality assessment, compare wild and domestic populations more systematically, and probe the nutritional implications of wild boar meat for human health. As global demand for sustainable, nutrient-rich protein intensifies, this mapping of the field’s intellectual architecture offers researchers a clear framework for where wild boar science is likely to head next.

Subject of Research: Bibliometric mapping of global research on wild boar (Sus scrofa) meat quality, genetics, and nutrition

Article Title: Wild boar (Sus scrofa) meat quality research at the crossroads of genetics and nutrition: a global bibliometric mapping

Article References: Quoc, L. P. T., Hao, P. M., Quyen, P. T., Thuan, N. H. D., & Nguyen, L. L. P. (2026). Wild boar (Sus scrofa) meat quality research at the crossroads of genetics and nutrition: a global bibliometric mapping. Food Science of Animal Resources, 46(1), Article 86. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44463-026-00084-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44463-026-00084-7

Keywords: wild boar, Sus scrofa, meat quality, bibliometric analysis, carcass traits, fatty acid composition, animal genetics, nutrition, genome-wide association studies, game meat, science mapping, sustainable protein

The study, led by Taner Gürel of the Samsun Veterinary Control Institute together with Şinasi Umur of Ondokuz Mayıs University, set out to fill a gap in molecular epidemiological data for Turkish wild boar populations. Wild boars occupy a pivotal position in the sylvatic cycles of Sarcocystis, Toxoplasma gondii, and Neospora caninum, three cyst-forming parasites of the phylum Apicomplexa that infect both animals and, in some cases, humans. Because wild boar populations have expanded dramatically across Europe and Anatolia, and because their meat is increasingly consumed as game, understanding what parasites these animals carry has direct implications for food safety, veterinary medicine, and public health.

To detect the parasites, the team combined classical parasitological techniques with a battery of molecular assays. Muscle tissue samples were first subjected to artificial digestion, a method that liberates cysts from meat fibers, and to histopathological examination to look for the characteristic sarcocysts embedded in muscle. The researchers then deployed a multiplex polymerase chain reaction targeting the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I gene, known as cox1, alongside a conventional PCR targeting the 18S ribosomal RNA gene to identify and differentiate Sarcocystis species. For the other two parasites, they used species-specific PCRs: one amplifying the 529 base pair repetitive element of Toxoplasma gondii, a target prized for its sensitivity because it is repeated hundreds of times in the parasite genome, and another targeting the NC5 region of Neospora caninum.

The results were unambiguous for Sarcocystis. Sarcocystis miescheriana was detected in 92 percent of the sampled animals, making it by far the dominant species in the population. Notably, the zoonotic species Sarcocystis suihominis, which can infect humans who eat undercooked pork or wild boar meat, was not found in any of the samples. That absence is reassuring from a food safety standpoint, though the authors caution that continued surveillance is warranted. Phylogenetic analysis of the cox1 sequences obtained from the Turkish isolates placed them close to European strains of S. miescheriana, consistent with the picture of a parasite lineage circulating widely among wild suids across the continent. The 18S rRNA sequence generated in the study has been deposited in GenBank under accession number PV104359.

Co-infections emerged as a defining feature of the population. Fifty-six percent of the wild boars harbored at least two of the three parasite species, and 28 percent carried all three simultaneously. Such high rates of mixed infection reflect the overlapping transmission routes of these parasites: Sarcocystis miescheriana cycles between pigs and canids, with dogs and other carnivores shedding sporocysts that contaminate the environment and are ingested by intermediate hosts; Toxoplasma gondii is transmitted both through oocysts shed by cats and through tissue cysts in meat; and Neospora caninum, whose definitive hosts are canids, is a major cause of abortion in cattle. A wild boar foraging in a contaminated landscape can readily pick up all three pathogens over its lifetime.

To identify risk factors for infection, the researchers applied multivariable logistic regression adjusted for age and sex. Adult age emerged as a significant predictor of Toxoplasma gondii infection, with adult animals showing roughly 3.77 times the odds of infection compared with younger boars, a statistically significant association. A similar but non-significant trend was observed for Neospora caninum, with an adjusted odds ratio of 3.21. Sex was not a significant predictor for either parasite. Triple infections were numerically more common in older animals, a pattern consistent with cumulative environmental exposure over time, although this trend did not reach statistical significance. The age effect fits the biology of these parasites: animals that live longer encounter more contaminated soil, water, and prey, and once infected with tissue cyst-forming protozoa they typically remain infected for life.

The detection of Toxoplasma gondii DNA in half of the sampled boars carries particular public health weight. Toxoplasmosis is one of the most common zoonotic infections worldwide, and while healthy adults usually experience mild symptoms, the parasite can cause severe disease in immunocompromised individuals and in fetuses when a woman acquires a primary infection during pregnancy. Game meat is an increasingly recognized route of exposure, and cases of ocular toxoplasmosis following wild game consumption have been documented in the medical literature. The 529 base pair repetitive element sequences generated in this study have been deposited in GenBank under accession numbers PV133829 through PV133831, adding to the genetic record of the parasite in the region.

Neospora caninum, detected in 38 percent of the animals, is less often a direct human health concern but is economically significant in livestock. The parasite is a leading cause of abortion and neonatal mortality in cattle worldwide, and wildlife reservoirs are thought to contribute to its persistence and spread. Previous surveys in other countries have found antibodies against N. caninum in feral swine and non-carnivorous wildlife, and the Turkish study adds molecular confirmation of the parasite’s presence in wild boar tissues from the region. The finding reinforces the idea that wild boars, which share habitats with livestock and are scavenged upon or hunted by canids, participate in the epidemiology of a parasite that costs the dairy industry substantially each year.

The Turkish results align with a growing body of European literature. Molecular studies in Italy, Greece, Latvia, Iran, and China have repeatedly identified Sarcocystis miescheriana as the predominant Sarcocystis species in wild boars, and surveys in Switzerland have documented both Sarcocystis and Toxoplasma in muscles of wild boars destined for human consumption. What distinguishes the new study is its combined assessment of all three parasites in the same animals, its use of both multiplex and conventional PCR platforms, and its formal statistical modeling of age and sex as risk factors. By quantifying co-infection patterns rather than treating each parasite in isolation, the study offers a more realistic picture of the parasite ecology within a single wild population.

The authors conclude that their results update the molecular epidemiology of tissue cyst-forming apicomplexans in Turkish wild boars and reinforce the importance of sustained One Health surveillance at the wildlife-livestock-human interface. As wild boar numbers continue to grow and the popularity of game meat rises, the study serves as a reminder that hunters, processors, and consumers all have a stake in safe handling and thorough cooking of wild game. It also highlights the value of molecular tools, which can distinguish morphologically similar parasite species and reveal co-infections that microscopy alone would miss. For now, the wild boars of Türkiye’s Black Sea coast stand as a vivid example of how much invisible parasite traffic moves through a seemingly healthy wildlife population.

Subject of Research: Molecular prevalence, co-infections, and genetic characterization of Sarcocystis, Toxoplasma, and Neospora parasites in wild boars from Türkiye

Article Title: Molecular Occurrence, Co-infections and Genetic Characterization of Sarcocystis miescheriana, Toxoplasma gondii and Neospora caninum in Wild Boars (Sus scrofa) from Türkiye

Article References: Molecular Occurrence, Co-infections and Genetic Characterization of Sarcocystis miescheriana, Toxoplasma gondii and Neospora caninum in Wild Boars (Sus scrofa) from Türkiye. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11686-026-01397-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s11686-026-01397-9

Keywords: Sarcocystis miescheriana, Toxoplasma gondii, Neospora caninum, wild boar, Türkiye, co-infection, molecular epidemiology, PCR, game meat, food safety, One Health, parasitology