A study involving Arabian horses from 12 countries found
that some populations maintained more genetic diversity and that the breed did
not contribute genetically to the modern-day Thoroughbred, contrary to popular
thought.
An international team of scientists was led by the
University of Florida’s Samantha Brooks, of the University of Florida, and Doug
Antczak and Andy Clark at Cornell University.
The group collected and examined DNA samples from 378
Arabian horses from Qatar, Iran, UAE, Poland, USA, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait,
United Kingdom, Australia, Denmark and Canada. The research is published in the
journal “Scientific Reports.”
Other than the horse’s location and whether it was used for
endurance, racing or showing, the samples were anonymised for data analysis
purposes.
The researchers also incorporated information gained in
previous studies, which included breeds such as Thoroughbreds, Persian Arabian,
Turkemen and Straight Egyptians.
“The Arabian horse has a special mystique due to the long-recorded
history of the breed,” Brooks said. “Arabian horse breeders, in particular,
know their horse’s bloodlines many generations back. What we found was that in
the area where this breed originates – likely the near East region, but we
don’t know exactly – there’s a healthy level of diversity. This is particularly
evident in populations from Bahrain and Syria, which suggests these are some
pretty old populations.”
The Arabian is prized for characteristics like heat
tolerance and endurance, as well as its unique appearance, with a dish-shaped
facial profile, wide-set eyes, an arched neck and a high tail carriage. It has
been exported from its ancestral homeland for centuries, with some modern
lineages drawn strictly from these smaller genetic pools, giving the breed a
reputation for inbred disorders. While this was true for some groups they
tested, Brooks noted, they also found remarkable diversity when considering the
breed as a whole.
Brooks contrasted the discovery of more diverse populations
with the samples they received from racing Arabians. Another longstanding myth
says that the Arabian contributed genetically to the modern Thoroughbred, but
the racing Arabians’ DNA told a different story. The research team found little
influence of the Arabian in the modern Thoroughbred’s DNA
“What we found in these samples was not that much Arabian
ancestry was part of the Thoroughbred line, but the opposite: that Thoroughbred
DNA exists in most of the modern racing Arabian lines, indicating a more recent
interbreeding within this group,” Brooks said. “I can’t speculate on the how or
why, but this is clearly the story the DNA is telling us.”
Another implication of this study, Brooks said, is the
potential to identify the genetic regions that determine some of the Arabian’s
unique traits, like their facial profile. This could be expanded to identify
the marker for other horse breeds’ head shapes, for example.
The study has a long list of co-authors, with contributors
from the University of Tehran, Iran; Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar;
the University of Kentucky; the University of Agriculture in Kraków, Poland;
the Hong Kong Jockey Club; the Equine Veterinary Medical Center in Doha, Qatar;
and the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Austria. Elissa Cosgrove from
the Clark lab and Raheleh Sadeghi, a visiting scientist from Iran in the
Antczak lab, shared first co-authorship of the study.
“An exceptional aspect of this project was the wonderful
level of open collaboration and sharing of resources by veterinary geneticists,
equine scientists, and horsemen from around the world,” Antczak said. “It was a
great pleasure to conduct this global study for the benefit of the horse.”
For more details, see:
Genome
Diversity and the Origin of the Arabian Horse
Elissa J.
Cosgrove, Raheleh Sadeghi, Florencia Schlamp, Heather M. Holl, Mohammad
Moradi-Shahrbabak, Seyed Reza Miraei-Ashtiani, Salma Abdalla, Ben Shykind, Mats
Troedsson, Monika Stefaniuk-Szmukier, Anil Prabhu, Stefania Bucca, Monika
Bugno-Poniewierska, Barbara Wallner, Joel Malek, Donald C. Miller, Andrew G.
Clark, Douglas F. Antczak & Samantha A. Brooks
Scientific
Reports (2020) vol 10, Article number: 9702 (2020)
1 comment:
Gill Cooper comments:
I was very interested to receive my update, as usual, and found the study of TB/Arabian genes enlightening. Datewise, I don't quite see how the TB could have influenced the early Arabian, but it could certainly have been introduced (against the 'law') into modern Arabian racing iines. Decades ago, when I first became aware of and interested in Arabians, I obtained, at great expense for a young girl freshly into her first job, copies of The Authentic Arabian Horse and Thoroughbred Racing Stock by Lady Wentworth - a redoubtable character whose parents, Lady Anne Blunt and Wilfred Scawen Blunt, apparently reintroduced the Arabian to England roughly a hundred years ago plus, and founded the famous Crabbet Park Stud.
When the stud came to Lady Wentworth herself, her ambition was to breed a 'true to type' Arabian of greater height. One of her main and most famous stallions, Indian Magic, was said by an 'insider' to have been by a grey Epsom Derby winner out of an Arabian mare and she falsified his papers to get him accepted, and so to introduce more height into her stock. The insider told me that this was not her only misdemeanour. Crabbet-bred horses were, on the whole, certainly taller than those from other studs.
The Arabs of old, and maybe today's too, divided their stock into 'strains' (five, if I remember correctly) within what they regarded as a pure breed (although apparently their word could never be taken as fact as to a particular horse's breeding). The strains had a different phenotype and presumably genotype from each other, the racing strain being the Managhi/Muniqui strain. The three 'founding father' Arabians seem to have looked quite different: the Byerley Turk looked like a Turcoman/Turkmene to me, the Darley Arabian more like a conventional Arabian and the Godolphin Arabian was often called the Godolphin Barb, and looked like one.
I once owned a much-loved TB mare whom I bought to save her from the knackers and we had three happy years together in her old age. She was the image of a Turkmene/Akhal Teke type.
Of course, to Arabian purists today, it is still sacrilege to say that Arabians are not 'pure' or to claim that Arabs had little influence on modern Thoroughbreds. I understand that the most influential of the founding fathers in today's TBs is the Darley Arabian, yet none of them, with the diversity of phenotype in their breed, look particularly traditionally Arabian to me. Also, those who claim this seem to look only at the male line whereas there could be equal, different influences in the female ancestors.
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