title: European domestic horses originated in two holocene refugia.
abstract: The role of European wild horses in horse domestication is poorly understood. While the fossil record for wild horses in Europe prior to horse domestication is scarce, there have been suggestions that wild populations from various European regions might have contributed to the gene pool of domestic horses. To distinguish between regions where domestic populations are mainly descended from local wild stock and those where horses were largely imported, we investigated patterns of genetic diversity in 24 European horse breeds typed at 12 microsatellite loci. The distribution of high levels of genetic diversity in Europe coincides with the distribution of predominantly open landscapes prior to domestication, as suggested by simulation-based vegetation reconstructions, with breeds from Iberia and the Caspian Sea region having significantly higher genetic diversity than breeds from central Europe and the UK, which were largely forested at the time the first domestic horses appear there. Our results suggest that not only the Eastern steppes, but also the Iberian Peninsula provided refugia for wild horses in the Holocene, and that the genetic contribution of these wild populations to local domestic stock may have been considerable. In contrast, the consistently low levels of diversity in central Europe and the UK suggest that domestic horses in these regions largely derive from horses that were imported from the Eastern refugium, the Iberian refugium, or both.
authors.affiliation: Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom. vmw23@cam.ac.uk
authors.forename: Vera
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Warmuth
authors.forename: Anders
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Eriksson
authors.forename: Mim A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Bower
authors.forename: Javier
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cañon
authors.forename: Gus
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Cothran
authors.forename: Ottmar
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Distl
authors.forename: Marie-Louise
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Glowatzki-Mullis
authors.forename: Harriet
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Hunt
authors.forename: Cristina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Luís
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: do Mar Oom
authors.forename: Isabel Tupac
authors.initials: IT
authors.lastname: Yupanqui
authors.forename: Tomasz
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ząbek
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Manica
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D001947:Breeding; D017753:Ecosystem; D005060:Europe; D005788:Gene Pool; D014644:Genetic Variation; D005843:Geography; D006736:Horses / Q000502:physiology*; D018895:Microsatellite Repeats / Q000235:genetics; D008877:Middle East; D013997:Time Factors