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>It would be even easier now with the advent of marker-assisted selection as GWASes increasingly turn up the genetic signatures of selection for domestication i
by nootropicat 8y ago
>It would be even easier now with the advent of marker-assisted selection as GWASes increasingly turn up the genetic signatures of selection for domestication in cats/dogs/rabbit/foxes/etc.
Do you know if these changes are mammal-generic, or species specific? If the former, it raises a fascinating possibility of making a virus that would domesticate the offspring of an infected mammal.
- gwern 8y agoThere is some evidence that it's generic. Darwin, as I mentioned, pointed out the close commonality of domesticated animals: the floppy ears, neoteny, year-round breeding, piebalding or spotty colors etc. There's no reason to expect all the human domesticators to be selecting for stuff like floppy ears, so the repetition suggests that there's some universal domestication syndrome where those all come as a package. I think the existing GWASes tend to support this but aren't definitive? Not really an expert on the details there. (One interesting claim is that humans appear to have undergone a light form of domestication syndrome too.)