"If the matrilines of US ferals were imported from "wild" stock from Europe
or elsewhere, could we refer to their descendents as "wild type"?  "

I have never known of a geneticist who even considered the
mitochondria important at all when he was talking about wild type.  The
mutants you see in mitochondria are almost all in non coding areas as
errors in coding genes are usually lethals.  Those non coding errors seldom
impact phenotype in any way.  And when they do the impact is generally
negative for survival.  So, I would say the answer to the question is no.

Dick

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