Title |
European Domestic Horses Originated in Two Holocene Refugia
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Published in |
PLOS ONE, March 2011
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DOI | 10.1371/journal.pone.0018194 |
Pubmed ID | |
Authors |
Vera Warmuth, Anders Eriksson, Mim A. Bower, Javier Cañon, Gus Cothran, Ottmar Distl, Marie-Louise Glowatzki-Mullis, Harriet Hunt, Cristina Luís, Maria do Mar Oom, Isabel Tupac Yupanqui, Tomasz Ząbek, Andrea Manica |
Abstract |
The role of European wild horses in horse domestication is poorly understood. While the fossil record for wild horses in Europe prior to horse domestication is scarce, there have been suggestions that wild populations from various European regions might have contributed to the gene pool of domestic horses. To distinguish between regions where domestic populations are mainly descended from local wild stock and those where horses were largely imported, we investigated patterns of genetic diversity in 24 European horse breeds typed at 12 microsatellite loci. The distribution of high levels of genetic diversity in Europe coincides with the distribution of predominantly open landscapes prior to domestication, as suggested by simulation-based vegetation reconstructions, with breeds from Iberia and the Caspian Sea region having significantly higher genetic diversity than breeds from central Europe and the UK, which were largely forested at the time the first domestic horses appear there. Our results suggest that not only the Eastern steppes, but also the Iberian Peninsula provided refugia for wild horses in the Holocene, and that the genetic contribution of these wild populations to local domestic stock may have been considerable. In contrast, the consistently low levels of diversity in central Europe and the UK suggest that domestic horses in these regions largely derive from horses that were imported from the Eastern refugium, the Iberian refugium, or both. |
X Demographics
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Spain | 1 | 50% |
Unknown | 1 | 50% |
Demographic breakdown
Type | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Members of the public | 2 | 100% |
Mendeley readers
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
United States | 2 | 2% |
United Kingdom | 1 | <1% |
Colombia | 1 | <1% |
France | 1 | <1% |
Unknown | 101 | 95% |
Demographic breakdown
Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Researcher | 21 | 20% |
Student > Ph. D. Student | 15 | 14% |
Student > Master | 14 | 13% |
Student > Bachelor | 14 | 13% |
Student > Postgraduate | 6 | 6% |
Other | 19 | 18% |
Unknown | 17 | 16% |
Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 51 | 48% |
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 8 | 8% |
Arts and Humanities | 7 | 7% |
Veterinary Science and Veterinary Medicine | 6 | 6% |
Social Sciences | 4 | 4% |
Other | 6 | 6% |
Unknown | 24 | 23% |