Veterinary session

The investigation of endangered and extinct animal breeds is currently among the main tasks of preservation work all around the world. The ultimate goal of this and further studies is to obtain a genetic background and ancestry of the autochthonous breeds, and to preserve this acquired knowledge in the genetic databank. In the case of extinct Zaupel sheep for example, there is a certain circle of today living breeds which is recognized as its closest descendants. It includes the Cikta sheep, the Bovec sheep and the Bavarian Waldschaf. In the current study, the focus lies on the comparison of two of them, the Cikta and the Bovec. For this purpose, their genetic material was compared, with the help of control region in mtDNA of a total of 91 unrelated individuals. Biological samples were collected from 70 Cikta sheep (Hungary) and 21 Bovec sheep (Slovenia) between 2015 and 2017.

In the comparison of Cikta and Bovec the total of polymorphic sites was 118 (while the number of shared mutations was 42) which shows a significant genetic identity between breeds. The results of the Tajima’s D-test was -0.2639, showing no significance (P > 0,10) as well as the negative value of FU’s Fs-statistic (-1.1404, P = 0.058) which is also considered to be not insignificant. The research points out that a deviation does not endanger the community of the two Zaupel derivates and the breeds were not subject to a genetic drift, thus are in genetic equilibrium.

This study confirms the common ancestry between Cikta and Bovec.