Since John Hawks already hit it I don't have much to add about the dog-starch-adaptation-paper in Nature, The genomic signature of dog domestication reveals adaptation to a starch-rich diet. I'm impressed at the yield from the sample sizes that they had, but as John alludes to this area of study has huge possibilities. The authors suggest that agriculture catalyzed domestication. That's fair enough, and carefully stated I'd say, because the Amerindians seem to have brought domestic dogs to the New World long before agriculture. In other words, the "domestication" event was probably a multi-layered affair. Looking through the supporting information it's obvious that the domestics were almost all Western breeds. As the search for adaptive variants expands to other lineages we might be in for surprises in terms of the signatures of selection as they vary across the dogs. Which brings me to humans. After all the variation in digestive ...
As man is, the dog is
Explore dog domestication adaptation, highlighting how a starch-rich diet links agriculture with canine evolution.
More on Discover
Stay Curious
SubscribeTo The Magazine
Save up to 40% off the cover price when you subscribe to Discover magazine.
Subscribe