Abstract
There is growing concern that extreme breed standardization contributes to a reduction of the effective population size and high levels of inbreeding, resulting in the loss of genetic diversity in many breeds. This study examined genetic diversity among eight popular dog breeds in Poland and evaluated the effectiveness of a 21-microsatellite (STR) panel recommended by the International Society for Animal Genetics (ISAG) for parent verification. The following breeds were characterized: German Shepherd, Maltese, Irish Wolfhound, Yorkshire Terrier, Biewer Yorkshire Terrier, Golden Retriever, Labrador Retriever, and French Bulldog. STRUCTURE analysis showed breed distinctiveness among all the dog breeds under study. Reynold’s distance ranged between θw = 0.634 and θw = 0.260. The studied breeds showed a medium level of genetic differentiation; the mean number of alleles per locus ranged from 3.4 to 6.6, and the effective number of alleles from 2.1 to 3.5. The mean degree of heterozygosity varied from 49% to 69% and from 47% to 68% for HO and HE, respectively. The population inbreeding coefficient (FIS) indicated an absence of inbreeding in the studied breeds. The average polymorphism information content (PIC) values for most of the breeds were higher than 0.5. The cumulative power of discrimination (PD) for all the markers in all breeds reached high values (close to 1.0), while the probability of identity (PID) was low, ranging between 10−11 and 10−19. The cumulative exclusion probability when the genotypes of one (PE1) and both parents (PE2) are known and showed that the parentage can be confirmed with a probability of 94.92% to 99.95% and 99.78% to 99.9999%, respectively.
Highlights
Accepted: 25 March 2021The dog (Canis familiaris) is one of the first animals domesticated by man and has accompanied humans in their day-to-day life for thousands of years
The study was conducted based on the results of analysis of microsatellite polymorphism performed as part of canine pedigree testing at the National Research Institute of Animal Production in 2018–2020
The genetic population structure of each breed was determined based on the admixture level for each individual dog using the correlated allele frequencies model implemented within the STRUCTURE software
Summary
Accepted: 25 March 2021The dog (Canis familiaris) is one of the first animals domesticated by man and has accompanied humans in their day-to-day life for thousands of years. Dogs were used as working animals to herd livestock, hunt, and guard the home, and they are treated as companion animals [1,2,3]. Their extensive use is associated with the human selection of dogs for certain phenotypes. It is important to carry out selective breeding while maintaining breed purity and high biodiversity. To this end, the genetic structure of different dog breeds needs to be studied and genetic changes occurring in breeds have to be monitored
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