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Banat donkey, a neglected donkey breed from the central Balkans (Serbia)

The dominant donkey breed in the Balkans is the mid-sized Balkan donkey with a grey to chocolate coat color. Local breeders from Serbia, however, still maintain a few larger individuals of a lighter coat color, named Banat donkey, and speculate that they are descendants of a Spanish donkey heard tha...

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Autores principales: Stanisic, Ljubodrag, Aleksić, Jelena M., Dimitrijevic, Vladimir, Kovačević, Branislav, Stevanovic, Jevrosima, Stanimirovic, Zoran
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7059758/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32175186
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8598
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author Stanisic, Ljubodrag
Aleksić, Jelena M.
Dimitrijevic, Vladimir
Kovačević, Branislav
Stevanovic, Jevrosima
Stanimirovic, Zoran
author_facet Stanisic, Ljubodrag
Aleksić, Jelena M.
Dimitrijevic, Vladimir
Kovačević, Branislav
Stevanovic, Jevrosima
Stanimirovic, Zoran
author_sort Stanisic, Ljubodrag
collection PubMed
description The dominant donkey breed in the Balkans is the mid-sized Balkan donkey with a grey to chocolate coat color. Local breeders from Serbia, however, still maintain a few larger individuals of a lighter coat color, named Banat donkey, and speculate that they are descendants of a Spanish donkey heard that had been transferred to the Banat region by the Hapsburg Queen Maria Theresa in the XVIII century for a specific purpose, to work in local vineyards. We have previously found a unique nuclear gene-pool and a prevalence of mitochondrial Clade 2 haplotypes in several such animals. In this study, we: (i) perform a comparative analysis of 18 morphological traits of the Banat donkey (seven individuals), Balkan donkey (53 individuals from two sub-populations of this breed) and the potential hybrids (eight individuals), and demonstrate the morphological distinctiveness of the Banat donkey, highlighting the diagnostic traits for distinguishing the breed: hip height, croup width, body length and chest depth; (ii) re-analyse published nuclear microsatellite data for these groups, and reveal that, although severely depopulated, the genetically distinct Banat donkey is not severely affected by the loss of genetic diversity and inbreeding; (iii) demonstrate that previously published Banat donkey mitochondrial haplotypes, analyzed genealogically together with those reported in ancient and modern individuals from Spain, Italy, Turkey, Cyprus and Africa, are shared with three Spanish breeds and individuals belonging to Amiata and some other Italian breeds. A unique morphological feature present in Banat and Somali wild donkeys, but also in Amiata donkeys, black stripes on legs, suggests that the origin of Clade 2 donkeys may be much more complex than previously thought. Actions to preserve the Banat donkey, a valuable but critically endangered genetic resource (<100 individuals), are urgent.
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spelling pubmed-70597582020-03-13 Banat donkey, a neglected donkey breed from the central Balkans (Serbia) Stanisic, Ljubodrag Aleksić, Jelena M. Dimitrijevic, Vladimir Kovačević, Branislav Stevanovic, Jevrosima Stanimirovic, Zoran PeerJ Biodiversity The dominant donkey breed in the Balkans is the mid-sized Balkan donkey with a grey to chocolate coat color. Local breeders from Serbia, however, still maintain a few larger individuals of a lighter coat color, named Banat donkey, and speculate that they are descendants of a Spanish donkey heard that had been transferred to the Banat region by the Hapsburg Queen Maria Theresa in the XVIII century for a specific purpose, to work in local vineyards. We have previously found a unique nuclear gene-pool and a prevalence of mitochondrial Clade 2 haplotypes in several such animals. In this study, we: (i) perform a comparative analysis of 18 morphological traits of the Banat donkey (seven individuals), Balkan donkey (53 individuals from two sub-populations of this breed) and the potential hybrids (eight individuals), and demonstrate the morphological distinctiveness of the Banat donkey, highlighting the diagnostic traits for distinguishing the breed: hip height, croup width, body length and chest depth; (ii) re-analyse published nuclear microsatellite data for these groups, and reveal that, although severely depopulated, the genetically distinct Banat donkey is not severely affected by the loss of genetic diversity and inbreeding; (iii) demonstrate that previously published Banat donkey mitochondrial haplotypes, analyzed genealogically together with those reported in ancient and modern individuals from Spain, Italy, Turkey, Cyprus and Africa, are shared with three Spanish breeds and individuals belonging to Amiata and some other Italian breeds. A unique morphological feature present in Banat and Somali wild donkeys, but also in Amiata donkeys, black stripes on legs, suggests that the origin of Clade 2 donkeys may be much more complex than previously thought. Actions to preserve the Banat donkey, a valuable but critically endangered genetic resource (<100 individuals), are urgent. PeerJ Inc. 2020-03-03 /pmc/articles/PMC7059758/ /pubmed/32175186 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8598 Text en ©2020 Stanisic et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Biodiversity
Stanisic, Ljubodrag
Aleksić, Jelena M.
Dimitrijevic, Vladimir
Kovačević, Branislav
Stevanovic, Jevrosima
Stanimirovic, Zoran
Banat donkey, a neglected donkey breed from the central Balkans (Serbia)
title Banat donkey, a neglected donkey breed from the central Balkans (Serbia)
title_full Banat donkey, a neglected donkey breed from the central Balkans (Serbia)
title_fullStr Banat donkey, a neglected donkey breed from the central Balkans (Serbia)
title_full_unstemmed Banat donkey, a neglected donkey breed from the central Balkans (Serbia)
title_short Banat donkey, a neglected donkey breed from the central Balkans (Serbia)
title_sort banat donkey, a neglected donkey breed from the central balkans (serbia)
topic Biodiversity
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7059758/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32175186
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8598
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