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Traces of human-mediated selection in the gene pool of red deer populations

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posted on 2023-09-25, 02:42 authored by Nina Moravčíková, Radovan Kasarda, Radoslav Židek, John McEwanJohn McEwan, Rudiger BrauningRudiger Brauning, Tomás Landete-Castillejos, Louis Chonco, Juraj Ciberej, Jaroslav Pokorádi

In this study, we analysed the effect of human-mediated selection on the gene pool of wild and farmed red deer populations based on genotyping-by-sequencing data. The farmed red deer sample covered populations spread across seven countries and two continents (France, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, New Zealand, Poland, and Slovakia). The Slovak and Spain wild red deer populations (the latter one in a large game estate) were used as control outgroups. The gene flow intensity, relationship and admixture among populations were tested by the Bayesian approach and discriminant analysis of principal components (DAPC). The highest gene diversity (He = 0.19) and the lowest genomic inbreeding (FHOM = 0.04) found in Slovak wild population confirmed our hypothesis that artificial selection accompanied by bottlenecks has led to the increase in overall genomic homozygosity. The Bayesian approach and DAPC consistently identified three separate genetic groups. As expected, the farmed populations were clustered together, while the Slovak and Spanish populations formed two separate clusters. Identified traces of genetic admixture in the gene pool of farmed populations reflected a strong contemporary migration rate between them. This study suggests that even if the history of deer farming has been shorter than traditional livestock species, it may leave significant traces in the genome structure.

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© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Publication date

2023-08-04

Project number

  • Non revenue

Language

  • English

Does this contain Māori information or data?

  • No

Publisher

MDPI

Journal title

Animals

ISSN

2076-2615

Volume/issue number

13(15)

Page numbers

2525

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