Microsatellite diversity of the Nordic type of goats in relation to breed conservation: how relevant is pure ancestry?

Abstract

SummaryIn the last decades, several endangered breeds of livestock species have been re-established effectively. However, the successful revival of the Dutch and Danish Landrace goats involved crossing with exotic breeds and the ancestry of the current populations is therefore not clear. We have generated genotypes for 27 FAO-recommended microsatellites of these landraces and three phenotypically similar Nordic-type landraces and compared these breeds with central European, Mediterranean and south-west Asian goats. We found decreasing levels of genetic diversity with increasing distance from the south-west Asian domestication site with a south-east-to-north-west cline that is clearly steeper than the Mediterranean east-to-west cline. In terms of genetic diversity, the Dutch Landrace comes next to the isolated Icelandic breed, which has an extremely low diversity. The Norwegian coastal goat and the Finnish and Icelandic landraces are clearly related. It appears that by a combination of mixed origin and a population bottleneck, the Dutch and Danish Landraces are separated from the other breeds. However, the current Dutch and Danish populations with the multicoloured and long-horned appearance effectively substitute for the original breed, illustrating that for conservation of cultural heritage, the phenotype of a breed is more relevant than pure ancestry and the genetic diversity of the original breed. More in general, we propose that for conservation, the retention of genetic diversity of an original breed and of the visual phenotype by which the breed is recognized and defined needs to be considered separately.

Genetic diversity analysis of major Sri Lankan goat populations using microsatellite and mitochondrial DNA D-loop variations

“…The genetic diversity was found to be higher in goats from West Asia, Europe and India followed by South Asian and South East Asian goats while it was lowest in East Asian goats. This decreasing gradient of genetic diversity is in line with increasing geographical distance from the proposed centers of goat domestication (Lenstra et al, 2016). Archaeological and mitochondrial DNA variations showed the domestication of goats to have taken place 10,000 years ago in a wide geographic area centered around Southwest Asia, between the Zagros mountains and the Fertile Crescent (Zeder and Hesse, 2000;Naderi et al, 2007;Zeder 2008;Colli et al, 2015).…”

Prioritising Support for Cost Effective Rare Breed Conservation Using Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis

“…Ne was calculated from a formula proposed by Wright (1931) using numerical population data. In addition, geographic origin of breeds was used as a proxy for between breed diversity (Lenstra et al, 2017;Parker et al, 2017). Note, a detailed discussion of these criteria is provided in section Criteria to Monitor Rare Breeds.…”

“…Moving to genetic difference, work by Blott et al (1998) and Lenstra et al (2017) among European cattle and goat breeds shows genetic relationships between breeds does reflect their geographic origin and common ancestry. No studies have yet employed genetic techniques (e.g., phylogenetic analysis) to measure difference across all UK native cattle breeds, with the exception of smaller case studies (e.g., Wiener et al, 2004).…”

“…Additional criteria contributing to utility could include a variable denoting the presence of a rare breed in farm parks to capture cultural value as proximate to public demand for seeing a rare breed. Such cultural and heritage attributes may be at odds with maximising diversity (Lenstra et al, 2017) suggesting a need to consider these criteria in conservation and monitoring strategies seeking to supply the range of different value attributes that rare breeds encode, situated on the total economic value (TEV) spectrum. Aside non-use values, criteria to measure direct use-value associated with marketability and consumption can be approximated through product branding and designations, including geographical indicators-e.g., product designation of origin (PDO).…”

Genetic diversity analysis of French goat populations reveals selective sweeps involved in their differentiation

“…; Lenstra et al . ). These two studies were based on genotyping 30 and 27 microsatellites respectively, and both included three local populations—Rove, Corse and Pyrénées—with the addition of the Alpine breed by Canon et al .…”