Capturing goats: documenting two hundred years of mitochondrial DNA diversity among goat populations from Britain and Ireland

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Date
2017
Authors
Cassidy, Lara M.
Teasdale, Matthew D.
Carolan, Sean
Enright, Ruth
Werner, Raymond
Bradley, Daniel G.
Finlay, Emma K.
Mattiangeli, Valeria
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Publisher
The Royal Society
Published Version
10.1098/rsbl.2016.0876
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Abstract
The domestic goat (Capra hircus) plays a key role in global agriculture, being especially prized in regions of marginal pasture. However, the advent of industrialized breeding has seen a dramatic reduction in genetic diversity within commercial populations, while high extinction rates among feral herds have further depleted the reservoir of genetic variation available. Here, we present the first survey of whole mitochondrial genomic variation among the modern and historical goat populations of Britain and Ireland using a combination of mtDNA enrichment and high throughput sequencing. Fifteen historical taxidermy samples, representing the indigenous 'Old Goat' populations of the islands, were sequenced alongside five modern Irish dairy goats and four feral samples from endangered populations in western Ireland. Phylogenetic and network analyses of European mitochondrial variation revealed distinct groupings dominated by historical British and Irish samples, which demonstrate a degree of maternal genetic structure between the goats of insular and continental Europe. Several Irish modern feral samples also fall within these clusters, suggesting continuity between these dwindling populations and the ancestral 'Old Goats' of Ireland and Britain.
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Keywords
Capra hircus , MtDNA capture , Next generation sequencing , Taxidermy samples , Conservation
Citation
Cassidy, L. M., Teasdale, M. D., Carolan, S., Enright, R., Werner, R., Bradley, D. G., Finlay, E. K. and Mattiangeli, V. (2017) 'Capturing goats: documenting two hundred years of mitochondrial DNA diversity among goat populations from Britain and Ireland', Biology Letters, 13(3), 20160876(6pp). doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2016.0876
Link to publisher’s version
http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/13/3/20160876
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/10468/6523
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Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences - Journal Articles
Copyright
© 2017, the Authors. Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved. This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Biology Letters. The definitive publisher-authenticated version [Cassidy, L. M., Teasdale, M. D., Carolan, S., Enright, R., Werner, R., Bradley, D. G., Finlay, E. K. and Mattiangeli, V. (2017) 'Capturing goats: documenting two hundred years of mitochondrial DNA diversity among goat populations from Britain and Ireland', Biology Letters, 13(3), 20160876(6pp). doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2016.0876] is available online at: https://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2016.0876