Poster Nina Moravčíková

Animal biodiversity in connection to food resources availability

At the bottom of this page, please find the article version of this poster.

Poster Nina Moravčíková
Poster Nina Moravčíková

Introduction

Animal biodiversity

  • significant impact on the functioning of the surrounding food systems and livelihoods
  • ensures numerous ecological functions and directly contributes to well-being, nutrition and food security
  • in connection to livestock, it makes agricultural production systems more resistant to shocks and stresses, including those caused by environmental changes
  • in recent decades, a significant decrease of livestock biodiversity has been demonstrated mainly concerning local populations

Research question

Is the biodiversity level of selected local cattle populations considered as important food resources in Slovakia sufficient for their sustainable use in the future?

Main method

Analysed breeds

  • dual-purpose (Slovak Pinzgau, Slovak Spotted) and beef breeds (Charolais, Limousine)

SNP data & QC

  • Illumina BovineSNP50 BeadChip, International Dairy and Beed chip
  • QC – PLINK 1.9: autosomal SNPs and animals with minimum call rate 90% and minimum minor allele frequency 1% retained in dataset

Genomic inbreeding

  • PLINK 1.9; FROH computed based on the scan of runs of homozygosity segment with different length in the genome of breeds

Effective population size

  • SNeP; historical and recent NeLD derived from the functional relationship between linkage disequilibrium level in the genome of breeds and effective population size

Genetic differentiation and selection signatures related to immune response

  • R package pcadapt; selection signatures derived based on principal component analysis

Main results

Figure 1. Scatter plot diagrams showing population structure
Figure 1. The scatter-plot representing the population structure based on the first two principal components
A), distribution of p-values based on the Q-Q plot
B) and the Manhattan plots of –log10 (p-values) for BTA6, BTA21, and BTA23 reflecting regions under selection pressure due to adaptation to specific environment condition. The outlier loci characterizing the strongest signals of selection are coloured in green
Table 1. Genomic inbreeding by FROH category in group of sires and dam
Table 1. Genomic inbreeding by FROH category in group of sires and dam.
Figure 4. Trend of effective population size in Charolais and Limousine cattle
Figure 4. Trend of effective population size in Charolais and Limousine cattle.

Main conclusion

  • The highest intensity of relatives mating in current generation of Slovak Pinzgau cattle reflects the rapid decline in population size during recent years
  • Analysis of genome structure revealed specific haplotypes strongly associated with genetic nature of each breed studied
  • The loss of biodiversity was most evident in genomic regions included in the genetic control of economically important traits. 
Figure 2. Trend of effective population size in Slovak Pinzgau cattle
Figure 2. Trend of effective population size in Slovak Pinzgau cattle
Figure 3. Trend of effective population size in Slovak Spotted cattle
Figure 3. Trend of effective population size in Slovak Spotted cattle.

Authors

Ing. Nina Moravčíková, PhD.
Department of Animal Genetics and Breeding Biology
Faculty of Agrobiology and Food Resources
Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra
Nitra, Slovakia
 

Radovan Kasarda, Barbora Olšanská, Kristína Lehocká, Kristína Candráková & Nina Moravčíková

Poster in pdf-format

Print