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Wolf -> Dog evolution

Johnny Pixels

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How does wolf to dog evolution work? Is there evidence of mutations, or is it all down to variation? Do wolves have recessive traits that can result in wildly different dogs like a pekinese and a St Bernard?

I'm going to end up :boxedin: in an argument if I'm not careful.
 
Basically, a dog is a wolf that has had all the brains bred out of it. Sorry dog lovers, but it's the truth!

I think it is mostly recessive traits, and inbreeding that produces different breeds of dogs. There is much genetic variation.
 
Johnny Pixels said:
How does wolf to dog evolution work? Is there evidence of mutations, or is it all down to variation? Do wolves have recessive traits that can result in wildly different dogs like a pekinese and a St Bernard?

I'm going to end up :boxedin: in an argument if I'm not careful.
Click to expand...

We had a conversation about exactly this in an evolution thread. I did a lot of reading and research on it. You'd be suprised. The story is actually very interesting.

Here's a great study on the subject:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9180076&dopt=Citation

And National Geographic did an amazing piece about it:
http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/data/2002/01/01/html/ft_20020101.1.html
 
What about the Siberian foxes that were domesticated in 50 years?
 
They're the same species. Wolf DNA differs from dog DNA no more than individual dog breeds differ from one another. They interbreed freely, and all offspring are normal, healthy, and fertile.
 
Well...one could make a case that certain breeds would have practical difficulties interbreeding with wolves (like Chiuhuahuas.) It could work in a test tube, but in the real world...?

They're genetically compatible, but in practice, I think some dog breeds are almost more like the ends of a ring species.
 
Do we know if anyone have tried to interbreed a Siant Bernard and ChiHuahua ?
 
Well, it'd presumably have to be a female St. Bernard and a male Chihuahua...

Maybe if they got him a little stepladder.
 
Jyera said:
Do we know if anyone have tried to interbreed a Siant Bernard and ChiHuahua ?
Click to expand...

Considering the fashion for miniature dogs in Asia, I won't be surprised. Until recently, I didn't even know that miniature Dobermans exist. Even toy breeds like poodles and malteses seem to have become smaller. My colleage was at a pet store when he overheard another customer looking for a "miniature Great Dane". The store owner replied that a "Great Dane" is exactly that because it is not a "Small Dane".

It may not be long when we'll find Pitbulls the size of iPods.
 
Johnny Pixels said:
How does wolf to dog evolution work? Is there evidence of mutations, or is it all down to variation? Do wolves have recessive traits that can result in wildly different dogs like a pekinese and a St Bernard?

I'm going to end up :boxedin: in an argument if I'm not careful.
Click to expand...
There was records kept of breeding silver foxes for domestication. In selecting for pups who were friendly to humans they ended up with some foxes with floppy ears and spots and other traits that are found in dog breeds. Probably the genes were present in small numbers within the wolf population and once discovered were selectively bred for. In a wild population such traits are not selected for since they offer no advantage and maybe offer a disadvantage.
eta: so some random genes were selected for by the domestication process and the rest were selected for by dog breeders.
 
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It worked like ...

[The site doesn't seem to allow direct links to images, so go here and choose the file nz326]

this.
 
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It's certainly astonishing how extreme you can make a "look" just by determinedly selective breeding. When a lot of the breed standards were written, this wasn't realised, and so phrases were incorporated such as "the head should be as broad as possible". The absence of any concept of "too broad" has then led to some very extreme types, as judges favour the broadest heads, and breeders breed for ever broader heads (and then you can only keep the breed going by caesarian section but that's a different argument).

So far as I know, the genes are mostly all there, and it's just a question of selecting for them. You could repeat the process several times, starting from the same generalised base type, and each time get the same result if that's what you were aiming for.

You can go back, too. A group of Siamese cat breeders, unhappy with the very "typey" modern Siamese with its bat ears and elongated body, started breeding back to the old-type Siamese, just by selecting for kittens that most resembled the old photographs of the champions of that time. They succeeded in producing what almost look like clones of cats from before the war. All today's "old-type" Siamese are fully pedigreed, as they didn't cross out at all, it's just that they don't win at shows as their predecessors did, because taste has gradually veered to the extreme type.

Rolfe.
 
Actually, the more grotesque results of selective breeding of domestic animals and pets present a quite good argument for evolution; any shape, even if otherwise highly unfavorable, can show up if you apply the proper selective pressure.

Hans
 
Then we get into the question of whether you can call anything "evolution" if it only involves selecting from among the existing gene pool, or whether you actually need to have new genes emerging before you can truly apply the term. Which I'm not going to get into because it only results in a sterile fight.

Nevertheless, if you look at something like the gerbil, your argument holds, in spades. Back in 1978 when I first took on a gerbil, the book I bought about them (you can tell they didn't give us much teaching in small furries where I went to college!) said that there was only one colour (the standard agouti coat), and that if you ever had a youngster in a litter that was a different colour, cherish it, as colour variety was much sought after by fanciers. In fact I believe that all the gerbils in captivity originate from an extremely small gene pool - is it this species that's all descended from one pregnant female, or is that the hamster? Anyway, at that time, see one and you'd seen the lot.

Well, you just have to google for gerbils now, to see a huge variety of colours and coat textures. In 30 years they have gone from being peas in a pod, to a goodly number of strains and colours. Just by selectively preserving the mutations in the coat colour genes.

Rolfe.
 
Evolving from one gene pool is one form of evolution. That is probably the most common form for higher species, with the occasional mutation thrown in (we have a number of concrete examples of a specific mutation influencing a race of domestic animals). Simpler life forms are known to exchange genes on occasion (probably more occasions than we initially thought).

Mmm, wtf. is a gerbil? Because one American cartoonist made some reasonably funny cartoons about mutilating gerbils, I tried to find out what they were, some time ago, but at that time could only find that they are a hamster-sized rodent. I don't think they exist as pets here in Denmark, or if they do, it is under a totally different name.

Hans
 
MRC_Hans said:
Mmm, wtf. is a gerbil? Because one American cartoonist made some reasonably funny cartoons about mutilating gerbils, I tried to find out what they were, some time ago, but at that time could only find that they are a hamster-sized rodent. I don't think they exist as pets here in Denmark, or if they do, it is under a totally different name.

Hans
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Gerbils
http://www.gerbil-info.com/html/other_gerbil_species.htm
 
MRC_Hans said:
Mmm, wtf. is a gerbil? Because one American cartoonist made some reasonably funny cartoons about mutilating gerbils, I tried to find out what they were, some time ago, but at that time could only find that they are a hamster-sized rodent. I don't think they exist as pets here in Denmark, or if they do, it is under a totally different name.
Click to expand...
All the information you want!

They're really quite cute, if you make sure not to get a biter. Some of them bite hard and hang on, and that is really painful.

Funny about the varying popularity. My Spanish colleague said she didn't have a clue what they were, and I thought it was just a name thing as she had spent some time thinking guinea pigs were some sort of pig until she saw a picture and/or someone said the word "cavy" to her. However, when I found some gerbil piccies for her, she said she'd never come across them at all.

Rolfe.
 
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