Maternal variability of Croatian Spotted goat (Capra hircus)

This study provides the first characterization of maternal ancestry and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) diversity in the Croatian Spotted goat (CSG), the most important autochthonous goat breed in Croatia. CSG (n = 25) were randomly sampled from seven herds and a 660-bp fragment from the mtDNA D-loop region was sequenced. Those sequences were compared with 122 corresponding GenBank sequences from goat populations in Albania, Austria, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Romania and Switzerland. CSG showed a great polymorphism (only three out of 17 haplotypes were shared) with high a haplotype (Hd = 0.967 +/- 0.019) and nucleotide diversity (pi = 0.01305 +/- 0.00068). When compared with Mediterranean and ancient goats, all of the 25 CSG were randomly scattered inside haplogroup A showing the weak phylogeographic structure with within-breed variance accounting for 91.76% of the genetic variation. In addition, population expansion tests (mismatch distribution and Fu's Fs statistic) supported these results suggesting at least one population expansion.