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5 From Wild Animals to Domestic Pets, an Evolutionary View of Domestication--Carlos A. Driscoll, David W. Macdonald, and Stephen J. O'Brien
Pages 89-110

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From page 89...
... The first domestic cats had limited utility and initiated their domestication among the earliest agricultural Neolithic settle ments in the Near East. Wildcat domestication occurred through a self-selective process in which behavioral reproductive isolation evolved as a correlated character of assortative mating coupled to habitat choice for urban environments.
From page 90...
... D arwin famously first described natural selection in 1859 with his classic monograph On the Origin of Species. sexual selection was addressed in Descent of Man, and Selection Related to Sex in 1871.
From page 91...
... Although natural selection plays a considerable role in the evolution of many traits (e.g., disease resistance) during the animal domestication process, sexual selection is effectively trumped by the human-imposed arrangements of matings and often by the human desire for particular secondary sexual characters.
From page 92...
... . Through the plethora of examples laid out in Variation, Darwin was making a case that the consequences of artificial selection are similar in spirit to those of natural selection, but, moreover, that artificial selection (whether methodical or unconscious)
From page 93...
... Accumulated archaeological, cultural, and genetic evidence points to the Terminal Pleistocene (≈12,000 years ago) in the Fertile Crescent (Fig.
From page 94...
... FiGUre 5.1 Map of the near east indicating the Fertile Crescent [according to Breasted (1916)
From page 95...
... With a reliable food source, human populations began to rise, technology for collecting grains further improved, and settlements initially encouraged by naturally abundant food led to larger settlements. Although hunter-gatherers throughout the world had long manipulated plants and animals (for instance by using fire to encourage edible plants or animals that thrive on disturbed land)
From page 96...
... TABle 5.1 Common Western Domestic Animals and Their Context earliest human Domestic Association/ Animal Wild Ancestor Domestication Common scientific Common scientific name name name name Time Dog Gray wolf 13,000–17,000 Canis familaris C lupus b.p.
From page 97...
... From Wild Animals to Domestic Pets, an Evolutionary View of Domestication /  Primary First special initial Breed initial selective locus Formation Utility Mechanism reference Central 3,000–4,000 sentry, food, ns/As Clutton-Brock (1995) , europe b.p.
From page 98...
... TABle 5.1 continued earliest human Domestic Association/ Animal Wild Ancestor Domestication Common scientific Common scientific name name name name Time Donkey African 4,800 b.p. Equus asinus Equus asinus wild ass asinus africanus horse european 5,000–4,000 b.p.
From page 99...
... . The molecular findings are also supported by a large body of archaeological evidence that implicates the near east as a likely locus of definitive domestication [although dog domestication may have begun in Central europe as early as the Upper late Paleolithic (Clutton-Brock, 1999; Muller, 2005)
From page 100...
... TABle 5.2 Favorable and Unfavorable ecological and Behavioral Pre-adaptations to Domestication Favorable Unfavorable social structure Dominance hierarchy Territoriality large gregarious groups Family groups or solitary Male social group affiliation Males in separate groups Persistent groups open membership Food preferences Generalist herbivorous feeder or Dietary specialist or carnivore omnivore Captive breeding Polygamous/Promiscuous mating Pair bonding prior to mating Males dominant over females Females dominant or males appease females Males initiate Females initiate Movement or posture mating cues Color or morphological mating cues Precocial young Altrical young easy divestiture of young Difficult divestiture of young high meat yield per food/time low meat yield intra- or interspecies aggressiveness nonaggressive naturally aggressive Tameable/readily habituated Difficult to tame readily controlled Difficult to control solicits attention Avoids attention/independent Captive temperament low sensitivity to environmental high sensitivity to environmental change change limited agility highly agile/difficult to contain small home range large home range Wide environmental tolerance narrow environmental tolerance non-shelter seeking shelter seeking implosive herd reaction to threat explosive herd reaction Commensal initiative exploits anthropic environments Avoids anthropic environments soUrCe: Developed from hale (1969) , Garrard (1984)
From page 101...
... A comprehensive genetic examination of the Felis silvestris species complex by our group revealed the relationships between domestic cats and their indigenous wild congeners (Driscoll et al., 2007)
From page 102...
... TABle 5.3 Pre-adaptive Features of some Commonly encountered neolithic Fauna ostensible Wild Progenitor Amenable social Food Common name latin name structure Preferences Bezoar y y C aegagrus Mouflon y y Ovis orientalis Auroch y y B
From page 103...
... From Wild Animals to Domestic Pets, an Evolutionary View of Domestication / 0 intra- or Amenable Common name Captive interspecies Captive Commensal of Descendent Breeding Aggressiveness Temperament initiative Domestic Form y n y n Goat y n y n sheep y n y n Cattle y n y n Pig y n y n y n y n y n y n n n n n n n n n n n n n y n y n horse y n y n Donkey n y n n n y n n y n y n Camel y n y n Camel na n y n nb n y n y n ? n y n y y rat y n y y rat y n y y house mouse y n y y house sparrow y n y ?
From page 104...
... Domestic cats, F. silvestris catus, are distrib� uted worldwide and overwhelmingly carry mtDNA clade IV mtDNA haplotypes.
From page 105...
... dating back a hundred thousand years before any archaeological record of domestication indicates that domestic cats originated from at least 5 wildcat mtDnA haplotypes.
From page 106...
... mitochondrial genetic diversity. in sum, the genetic evidence appears to be most consistent with a single protracted domestication episode, one incorporating multiple wildcat matrilines over the broad near eastern human cultural area.
From page 107...
... . The alternative hypothesis -- of multiple independent domestication events -- seems unlikely for 2 reasons: First, the vast majority of sampled domestic cats fall into the same mtDnA clade, which also includes F
From page 108...
... . Because 97% or more of the nearly 1 billion domestic cats living today are random-bred house cats, or are feral and intact, the overwhelming preponderance of domestic cats choose their own mates.
From page 109...
... . The power of artificial selection to produce modern fancy cat breeds has only recently -- within the last 200 years -- been brought to bear on the accumulated store of wildcat genetic variation (Fogle, 2001; stephens and yamazaki, 2001)


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