Genetic diversity in horses inferred from distribution of hemotypes—I. Analysis of similarity among 14 populations of 10 breeds using generalized Mahalanobis distance ( D2)

Abstract

1. 1. Ninety-one pairwise comparisons of 14 populations yielded highly significant T 2 values for inter-breed differences while four subpopulations of Thoroughbred horses were nearly identical. 2. 2. Generalized Mahalanobis distance was carried out by comparing simultaneously all 14 populations with respect to 26 variables (phenotypes) contributing most to the discriminant function. 3. 3. The number of variables could be reduced to 12 phenotypes in final comparisons. 4. 4. In general the calculated distances agreed with known relationships between horse breeds. 5. 5. However the obtained distances are thought to be biased due to the nature of selected phenotypes which do not always correspond to “breed-markers”.