Domestication and coat colours : A review

Abstract: The domestication of animals is a process of great interest to many scientific fields, including genetics. Differences in coat colour between wild and domesticated animals have been of scientific interest for a long time. Coat colours are easily recognizable phenotypes and so have been studied since the dawn of modern genetics. Many phenotypes that are similar across species have the same genetic basis, but there are numerous exceptions. Similar phenotypes within a species can also have different genetic backgrounds. The progressive advances in genetic research methodology have given new insights into both the molecular basis for coat colours and the history of domestication over the last decades. The variation in coat colours seen today is believed to be caused mainly by human selection. Similarities in morphological changes between different species during domestication, including colour phenotypes such as white spotting, have long been noted. This is known as the domestication syndrome and two major hypotheses for this have been suggested: the neural crest hypothesis and the thyroid hormone hypothesis. This thesis gives an overview of the current knowledge about the genetic basis of coat colours in mammals, the genetic aspects of domestication of animals, and how the two are related.