Phenogenetic features of the Nenets breed Ural ecotype of the reindeer

¹ North-West Center for Interdisciplinary Problems of Food Supply, 196608 St. Petersburg-Pushkin, Russia
² Federal Science Center for Animal Husbandry named after Academy Member L. K. Ernst, the urban district of Podolsk, Dubrovitsy settlement, 142132 Moscow region, Russia

^* Corresponding author: layshev@mail.ru

Abstract

For the first time, comprehensive studies of the phenogenetic features of the Ural ecotype of domestic reindeer of the Nenets breed were performed. It was found out that the Ural reindeer relative to other ecotypes of the Nenets breed have smaller linear dimensions and live body weight. The studied group of reindeer was characterized by the minimum values of the majority of population genetic indicators, including the effective number of alleles (Ne = 4.422 ± 0.614), the Shannon information index (I = 1.663 ± 0.102), and the level of both the observed and expected heterozygosity (Ho = 0.561 ± 0.064 and He = 0.740 ± 0.035, respectively). It exceeded two other samples from neighboring breeding regions (Nenets Autonomous district and the Komi Republic) in the average number of alleles per locus: (Na = 9.667 ± 0.577 versus Na = 9.555 ± 0.669 and Na = 9.557 ± 0.709, respectively). Animals of the Ural population (YAM) have a closer genetic structure with reindeer individuals of the neighboring Nenets Autonomous district (NAO). The studied sample of the Nenets breed was characterized by a shift in genetic diversity towards a lack of heterozygotes, as evidenced by the positive Fis values. The introduction of genetic methods in the reindeer herding will allow improving the breeding work in the industry, revealing intraspecific genetic variation in inbreeding herds and identifying intrabreed groups of animals.