Girdland Flink

Owing to the paucity of cat remains in the archeological record and the lack of established osteometric features distinguishing remains from wild and domestic F. s. lybica 2 , current hypotheses about early cat domestication are grounded in scanty evidence when compared to other domesticated animals.

Our extended dataset highlights important changes in human preferences for horse phenotypes. Specifically, the large number of samples from the Middle Ages demonstrate significant differences in coat colour phenotypes between pre-medieval and medieval horses. Spotted and diluted horses were considerably more frequent during the Bronze Age and Iron Age, whereas solid phenotypes, especially chestnut, were predominant in the Middle Ages.

In this work, we investigate genome-wide heterozygosity and differentiation in the Kauai chicken population. We find this population to have high heterozygosity, consistent with its probable origin as an admixed population of wild and domestic chickens. We show the extent of the genomic changes that can result from the feralisation process, through the identification of sweep regions that are unique to this feral population.