Showlines and Workinglines are Genetically Different - Interesting Study - Page 7

Ibrahim, re your first of these four posts:
That is precisely why I said the study needs to
provide more info about the actual dogs used
in it and their origins.

MOST dogs in Scandinavia  are 'international
type';  ie they are not far bred on from the (West)
German Showline stock THAT IS ALSO ADEPT
AT SCHUTZHUND - like a great deal of Show
GSDs in the UK and across Europe.  It is the
American SL dogs that are out of step here, and I
believe there aren't many ASL s in Finland, so maybe
none at all in the 1000 researched.  American WL dogs
[and the minority Euro show-type]  are phenotypically
(and for all I know genotypically) more like the German /
International dogs -  so a mix of SL and WL for THESE
purposes is different from 'most' mixing of the 2 lines in
the USA,  and in Finland  would reflect genetically in
progeny that are  what the researchers see as 'showline'.

Hope I haven't confused you !  Regards, L. 

I want to add this; I am not a Linguistics expert but calling a present human as genetically different from ancient human might not be correctly perceived. There should be a better word than different since saying genetically different would   be linked to a change that was caused to Genetic Build Up.
Another word should be used to mean " nature + environment + various grouping lead human to reinforce certain phenotypes and genotypes without wrongly mixing it with change in Human's Genetic Build.

No Hundmutter you did not and based on our knowledge which is based on what we see you are very correct.

This study was published last autumn in Finland and resulted a lot of debate. Because of strong criticism, researchers wrote clarification for the study.

Here is link.

http://sakury.weebly.com/uploads/1/0/9/5/10955576/clarifications_to_the_genetic_differentiation_final.pdf

That's interesting, too bad it wasn't included with the original report to give us all a better understanding of how the study was conducted. That could have made a big difference in the way most received and responded to the topic.

I don't understand what everyone is getting worked up about.  This looks like a paper for a conference proceeding to me.  Basically an idea/premise that has had minimal research time behind it with little, to no funding.  Pending on how things go down the road it could be funded and turned into something bigger or end up in a pile of unfished work on a professors desk.  It may or may not have been peer reviewed in a limited fashion, pending on the type of conference it was presented at.  I can't find it anywhere else, but it certainly has not been published in any mainstream acedemic journal (which most people here on the forum do not have access to in any way).

Now onto the people named in the article, Hannes Lohi has published articles of a similar nature for other breeds and genetic disorders, so he is a recognized expert, whether people like it or not.  The other two people look to me like a grad student and a post-doc being supervised by Hannes Lohi.  This should has some meaning if you are familiar with how people get STEM field PhD's.  There's nothing fishy or wrong about the premise of the article, but they were certainly in a very preliminary stage of reasearch at the time the paper was put out.  We don't know where they are today, maybe nowhere, maybe they didn't get funding, etc.

My final statement is about people who used the various belgian sheepdogs as an example to refute the findings of the paper. 

Well you could not be any more incorrect. 

There actually is funded research going on right now to study the DNA various AKC breeds.  National Geographic published a laymans overview of Elaine A. Ostrander's research.  Although not a primary issue in her research, she did find that Malinois, Belgian Sheepdog & Tervuren do have differentiating characteristics in thier DNA, enough to make them different breeds.  So, whoever posted that as an example is certainly incorrect. 

Let me clarify with an example, Bonobo's are a smaller chimpanzee's found in the Congo, BUT are separated by the nearest ancestor with the common chimpazee by about 6 million years.  The same thing is going on with the Malinois, Belgian Sheepdog & Tervuren, just on a much shorter time scale.  There is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON NOT to believe that the same evolutionary mechanisim isn't taking place with the West German , Czech and American line German Shepherds.  Elaine A. Ostrander's research on dog DNA could have potentially sampled West German , Czech and American line German Shepherd DNA the same way she did with Malinois, Belgian Sheepdog & Tervuren, but she did not.  My guess is because she likely was unfamilar with the existance of Czech German shepherds and sampled whatever was commonly available (most likely she was directed to specific places to get her samples by a the AKC).  If she had sampled DNA from West German , Czech and American line German Shepherds like she did with the Belgians, the issue would be settled already and all opinions after would moot.

Here's another little tidbit from Elaine Ostrander's research that should flip your thoughts of dog DNA on its head; German Shepherd have more DNA characteristics in common with French Bulldogs than they do with Malinois, Belgian Sheepdog or Tervurens, with Laboradors being closest in the middle of the 6 breeds.  Essentially German Shepherd have far more Mastiff type DNA than they do herding type DNA and the Belgians have far more herding type DNA than they do Mastiff type DNA.  Personally this explains a lot for me.  I have had rottweilers and have seen many Malinois at my dog clubs shows etc.  The german shepherds, in my opinion always had personalities that were a lot more like rottweilers than malinois, but it was only an anecdotal obeservation.  Now the science has proven my gut instinct correct.  The Belgian breeds are essentially Collies.

Despite the length of your defense this was never peer reviewed and published and it has not been validated by other researchers.  Best case scenario it suggest the possibility of it's intended message when confined to a very small group of dogs and has no validity to the overall GSD population outside the group chosen for the test.  Very often grad students will go to great lengths to overplay the importance of their data and research as it is the fruit of much work and worry.  NBA basketball players DNA would be different from my DNA in some characteristics so are they a new human subspecies??  I suspect world class distance runners such as marathoners might differ from my DNA in some ways.  What qualifies as a difference in DNA sufficient to be of importance??  To make a case for differences much, much larger population sizes randomly chosen first, analyzed for specific markers of likely importance and then put into subsets would be better.  If you look through enough data for enough variables something always falls into significance.  The P test is not infallible.

Using your 'subspecies' analogy, are you suggesting that breeds of dogs should be considered subspecies? If so, what dog are they sub to? Pariah dogs in India perhaps? That would make sense.

bubbabooboo, I'm not sure what you are getting at.  I said the Hannes Lohi paper was not published and was likley a conference proceeding, nothing to argue about here.  What I did say is that  Hannes Lohi is a known DNA researcher and it appears he was involved in the paper originally posted by Dawulf.  Its not clear if its his paper, a grad student or a post-doc, so your emphasis on belittling "grad student research" has no place in the discussion, but I would say based on the papers I see Hannes Lohi publishing this is not to far off from his previous works.  He is outside the USA, I just don't see this topic in any of his papers published in English language journals, there could be something peer reviewed in another country, but I have no way of finding it, nor could I read it if I could.  I was simply clarifying "what" this paper may be to people who are unfamiliar with the process of publishing acedemic papers.

Here is a paper he was involved in as a co-aurthor.  Surprisingly its free access.  Similar topic, so as I said, its one of many issues he is working on related in some way to the article posted by Dawulf:

http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pgen.1002316

However, the  Elaine A. Ostrander research is the result of MANY published papers, national geographic does not make note of them because it is an article for laymen.  I've read some and have access to them.  I may not have explained in the best way possible, but Elaines sample size was not small and the NAtional Geographic article tells very little about the grander aspect of their project.  The articles are not free, so if you don't have access to them, we will simply have to agree to disagree.

joanro, Elaine A. Ostrander separated them by pooling common DNA markers into the categories: Wolf, Herder, Hunter, Mastiff.  Here research showed that the Begian breeds all had different ratios of each.  The differences were small, but still distinct.  Thats why I mentioned the French Bulldog and the GErman Shepherd because the they had a similar small difference in the markers

Momos, I'm familiar wit the article about the link between mastiff and GSD from Natgeo years ago. My question was response to bubbabo and his reference to subspecies. Was not a serious question, but the pariah dogs of India are supposedly primitive dogs.