Evol Ecol Res 20: 657–678 (2019)     Full PDF if your library subscribes.

Revising the biogeography of livestock animal domestication

Indre˙ Žliobaite

Department of Computer Science and Finnish Museum of Natural History (LUOMUS), University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

Correspondence: I. Žliobaitė, Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki, PO Box 68, Helsinki 00014, Finland

ABSTRACT

Background and aim: Human society relies on four main livestock animals: sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle. All were domesticated at nearly the same time and place. But why only these few and not others? And why are livestock domestication rates not uniform across biogeographic realms?

Perspective and dataset: I survey the global occurrence of large mammalian herbivore genera around 15,000 to 5000 years before present (BP), and compile a dataset characterizing their ecology, habitats, and dental traits.

Methods of analysis: Predictive modelling of the probability of domestication using machine learning (decision trees and logistic regression). I extract patterns from the resulting models to highlight ecological differences between domesticated and non-domesticated genera. I analyse the estimated probabilities of domestication across biogeographic realms and in the context of local climatic conditions.

Conclusions: The most suitable genera for domestication appear to be generalists adapted to persistence in marginal environments of low productivity, largely corresponding to cold, semi-arid climate zones. Although domestication rates varied across continents, potentially suitable candidate animals were rather uniformly distributed across continents. I propose that the rates of domestication across biogeographic realms largely depend upon how much intersection between hot and cold semi-arid climatic zones was available on each continent.

Keywords: biogeography, domestication, ecology, hypsodonty, large mammals, teeth.

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