A Single Origin for Dogs South of Yangtze River, less than 16,300 Years Ago (Pang et al. 2009)

Another recent study by Boyko et al. raised some doubts about the strength of the evidence for dog domestication in Asia, by pointing out that including semi-feral village dogs may increase the observed Asian diversity. The advance access manuscript for this paper is free, so anyone interested in the sampling details. The authors do cite the other recent paper:

Notably, in a recent study of African village dogs (Boyko et al. 2009) it was claimed that the reported high diversity for mtDNA in East Asia compared to other parts of the world (Savolainen et al. 2002), was the result of sampling bias. However, in the present study (see “Results”) we show this assertion to be incorrect.

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Thus, a direct comparison shows that the smaller South Chinese sample has 73% more haplotypes than the African one; the assertion by Boyko et al. (2009) is the result of not adequately compensating for differences in sample size between the relatively small East Asian samples in Savolainen et al. (2002) and the larger African samples. The African sample has also all the other characteristics of the “western” dog populations: The haplotypes fall in the same parts of the MS networks as for other western populations, leaving large parts unique to East Asia (data not shown); and values are high for UT (66.7%) and UTd (90.9%), and number of unique haplotypes low (12) (compare with e.g. South China: UT (42.0%), UTd (53.4%), and number of unique haplotypes (40; i.e. only one less than the total number of haplotypes in the African sample!)). To conclude, the sample of African village dogs in Boyko et al. (2009), like all “western” samples, has considerably lower genetic variation than the populations in ASY.

Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msp195

mtDNA Data Indicates a Single Origin for Dogs South of Yangtze River, less than 16,300 Years Ago, from Numerous Wolves

Jun-Feng Pang et al.

Abstract

There is no generally accepted picture of where, when, and how the domestic dog originated. Previous studies of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) have failed to establish the time and precise place of origin because of lack of phylogenetic resolution in the so far studied control region (CR), and inadequate sampling. We therefore analysed entire mitochondrial genomes for 169 dogs to obtain maximal phylogenetic resolution, and the CR for 1,543 dogs across the Old World for a comprehensive picture of geographical diversity. Hereby, a detailed picture of the origins of the dog can for the first time be suggested. We obtained evidence that the dog has a single origin in time and space, and an estimation of the time of origin, number of founders and approximate region, which also gives potential clues about the human culture involved. The analyses showed that dogs universally share a common homogenous gene pool containing 10 major haplogroups. However, the full range of genetic diversity, all 10 haplogroups, was found only in south-eastern Asia south of Yangtze River, and diversity decreased following a gradient across Eurasia, through 7 haplogroups in Central China, and 5 in North China and Southwest Asia, down to only 4 haplogroups in Europe. The mean sequence distance to ancestral haplotypes indicates an origin 5,400-16,300 years ago from at least 51 female wolf founders. These results indicate that the domestic dog originated in southern China less than 16,300 years ago, from several hundred wolves. The place and time coincide approximately with the origin of rice agriculture, suggesting that the dogs may have originated among sedentary hunter-gatherers or early farmers, and the numerous founders indicate that wolf taming was an important culture trait.

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