AUTHOR=Colli Licia , Milanesi Marco , Vajana Elia , Iamartino Daniela , Bomba Lorenzo , Puglisi Francesco , Del Corvo Marcello , Nicolazzi Ezequiel L. , Ahmed Sahar S. E. , Herrera Jesus R. V. , Cruz Libertado , Zhang Shujun , Liang Aixin , Hua Guohua , Yang Liguo , Hao Xingjie , Zuo Fuyuan , Lai Song-Jia , Wang Shuilian , Liu Ruyu , Gong Yundeng , Mokhber Mahdi , Mao Yongjiang , Guan Feng , Vlaic Augustin , Vlaic Bogdan , Ramunno Luigi , Cosenza Gianfranco , Ahmad Ali , Soysal Ihsan , Ünal Emel Ö. , Ketudat-Cairns Mariena , Garcia José F. , Utsunomiya Yuri T. , Baruselli Pietro S. , Amaral Maria E. J. , Parnpai Rangsun , Drummond Marcela G. , Galbusera Peter , Burton James , Hoal Eileen , Yusnizar Yulnawati , Sumantri Cece , Moioli Bianca , Valentini Alessio , Stella Alessandra , Williams John L. , Ajmone-Marsan Paolo TITLE=New Insights on Water Buffalo Genomic Diversity and Post-Domestication Migration Routes From Medium Density SNP Chip Data JOURNAL=Frontiers in Genetics VOLUME=9 YEAR=2018 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/genetics/articles/10.3389/fgene.2018.00053 DOI=10.3389/fgene.2018.00053 ISSN=1664-8021 ABSTRACT=

The domestic water buffalo is native to the Asian continent but through historical migrations and recent importations, nowadays has a worldwide distribution. The two types of water buffalo, i.e., river and swamp, display distinct morphological and behavioral traits, different karyotypes and also have different purposes and geographical distributions. River buffaloes from Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Romania, Bulgaria, Italy, Mozambique, Brazil and Colombia, and swamp buffaloes from China, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia and Brazil were genotyped with a species-specific medium-density 90K SNP panel. We estimated the levels of molecular diversity and described population structure, which revealed historical relationships between populations and migration events. Three distinct gene pools were identified in pure river as well as in pure swamp buffalo populations. Genomic admixture was seen in the Philippines and in Brazil, resulting from importations of animals for breed improvement. Our results were largely consistent with previous archeological, historical and molecular-based evidence for two independent domestication events for river- and swamp-type buffaloes, which occurred in the Indo-Pakistani region and close to the China/Indochina border, respectively. Based on a geographical analysis of the distribution of diversity, our evidence also indicated that the water buffalo spread out of the domestication centers followed two major divergent migration directions: river buffaloes migrated west from the Indian sub-continent while swamp buffaloes migrated from northern Indochina via an east-south-eastern route. These data suggest that the current distribution of water buffalo diversity has been shaped by the combined effects of multiple migration events occurred at different stages of the post-domestication history of the species.