14 DAY TRIAL // Dogs have been an essential part of human life for the last 15,000 years, when the first specimens were domesticated. Anthropologists and historians underline the fact that our evolution would not have been the same were it not for the protection, hunting, and herding abilities that the canines brought to the “table.” In return, the former wolves received affection and shelter, so the exchange was mutually beneficial. Now, dogs have diversified – naturally or artificially – in a large variety of breeds and specializations, and a new study comes to shed light on this evolution, and its effects on the animals.
“How the domestication process affects genetic diversity is poorly understood. We were interested in studying village dogs because we expected them to be the modern day dogs most similar to dogs that existed before man began to create breeds. Our study is unique because we are able to surmise whether specific village dog populations are more genetically similar to breed dogs or indigenous ancestral dogs,” Cornell University Department of Biological Statistics and Computational Biology expert Adam Boyko explains.
He is also the lead author of the paper, published in the August 3rd issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The scientist hopes that the investigation he and his colleagues conducted, which was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), may help other researchers better understand how breeds came to diversify evolutionarily, and how they came to develop their amazing skills at certain jobs, in the times before people discovered genes and how to breed certain types of dogs artificially. The new paper could also provide insight into how domestication and co-habitation between individuals and dogs shaped the canines' evolutionary paths and genetic traits.
In their experiments conducted in Africa, the CU researchers noticed that village dogs were genetically distinct from non-native breed dogs, but that they bore some resemblance (in certain analyzed markers) to mixed dog breeds in North America.
“For the most part, African dogs are distinct from other dogs we have studied, and these village dog populations display more diversity than purebred dogs across the markers we tested. We found exceptions in Namibia and Giza, which may be due to European colonization or proximity to Eurasia, the ancestral home of modern breed dogs,” Boyko says.
These markers could then be used to assess how dog populations may have spread over the continents. And, seeing how humans were most likely traveling with them too, we could get a better view of how our ancestors migrated as well, the team reveals.