PIXABAY, KATRINBECHTEL
Domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) have lived alongside humans for thousands of years. An extensive genetic analysis, published this week (April 25) in Cell Reports, now sheds light on the roles that factors like migration and breeding likely played in canine evolution.
“Each time we come up with different changes into our own sort of society and the way we live, then there’s room for a new kind of dog, or a new shape, a new size,” coauthor Heidi Parker, a dog geneticist at the US National Institutes of Health, told The Verge.
Park and colleagues assessed the genomes of 1,346 dogs across 161 breeds to assemble an extensive family tree, outlining the canines’ evolutionary histories. The team’s analysis revealed that the 161 dog breeds fell ...
