Forensic assessment of kinship, genomic ancestry, and natural history of an iconic tiger of Harlem, New York City

In the fall of 2003, a 2-yr-old tiger named Ming, weighing around 300 pounds, was discovered living in an apartment in Harlem, New York. Ming's rescue by NYPD was witnessed, recalled, and venerated by scores of neighbors. The tiger's history and ancestry stimulated considerable media interest, investigative sleuthing, and forensic genomic analyses. The Harlem tiger's subspecies makeup, his relationship to his putative sibling named Cheeky living in Homestead, Florida, and his genetic distinctiveness from wild tigers was assessed by whole-genome sequence (WGS) analyses of trace materials from plucked whiskers. Verified subspecies ancestry of Ming and Cheeky was determined by comparing their WGS to single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) annotation from WGS of 35 voucher (pure subspecies) tiger specimens from six living subspecies. Genome-wide structure analyses based on the full set of 3,422,109 SNPs and a subset of 6,724 and 110 ancestry-informative markers showed that Ming has an admixed genetic background from five subspecies: Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti 35 ~ 40%), Bengal tiger (P. t. tigris 17 ~ 23%), Sumatran tiger (P. t. sumatrae 12 ~ 14%), Amur tiger (P. t. altaica ~ 10%), and Malayan tiger (P. t. jacksoni 1 ~ 10%). Cheeky is confirmed to be a full sibling to Ming and displayed an admixed genetic background with similar subspecies proportions as Ming's. The forensic assessment of the tigers' subspecies composition, kinship, and recent history of animal transaction provides an analytical pipeline and holds promise for supporting global tiger conservation efforts through standardized genomic analysis of tigers or tiger products with unknown origins.