Decoding Animal Domestication with Palaeogenetics

Millennia of interaction between humans and domestic animals have had a tremendous impact on the development of modern societies. Throughout this long shared history humans have transported domestic animals all across the globe. Large-scale human-mediated movement of animals have made it particularly difficult to re-trace the origin of species such as dogs. Long distance transportation may also imply that domestic animals not only adapted to a wide-range of environments but also interacted and exchanged genetic material with wild populations from different ancestries. Both gene flow and adaptation clearly influenced the current genetic and phenotypic make up of domestic animals. Understanding patterns of movement across time and space is therefore not only important to re-trace the geographic origin of domestic animals but also to understand the processes of domestication as a whole. Here I will present novel results based on ancient genomic data that demonstrates how local ancestry of pigs and dogs in Europe was extremely dynamic through time shaped by patterns of human migrations. In addition I will show how transportation has provided the opportunity for wild populations to exchange genetic material with incoming domestic animals and how this process has affected their current genetic make up.