An international team of researchers, with the participation of UAB professor, Jordi Jordana, has published in Science magazine the results of their investigation into the origins of the domesticated donkey. The authors have discovered by using genetic analysis that the domesticated donkey originated in northeastern Africa approximately 5,000 years ago, quite probably due to the desertification of the Sahara. The conclusions of the study state that all domesticated donkeys come from two different lines from northeast Africa.

Donkeys were the last species of domestic livestock (cows, sheep, goats, horses, pigs, etc.) to be domesticated. Archeological evidence suggests that they were domesticated some 5,000 to 6,000 years ago. However, there was no solid evidence of where their domestication may have taken place. The majority of species were first domesticated in the Near East (Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, Iraq, etc.) and southwest Asia (the Arabian Peninsula), so it may seem logical that that the same occurred in the case of donkeys. Nevertheless, based on the genetic data of 259 domesticated donkeys from 52 countries, the team of researchers arrived at an unexpected conclusion: the closest relatives to present day domesticated donkeys are the wild asses of northeastern Africa, i.e., Nubian wild asses, (E.a.africanus) and the Somalian wild ass (E.a.somaliensis)

The scientists have also discovered the number of domestication events that took place. The study of the domestic populations places these individuals in two large groups with a high level of divergence (of the sequences of mitochondrial DNA) between them, which would suggest two different origins. Thus, the phylogenetic analyses indicated the existence of two divergent maternal lineages, which implies two domestications. The separation of these two lineages coming from a hy
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Contact: Octavi Lpez
octavi.lopez@uab.es
34-93-581-3301
Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona
28-Jun-2004