Presentation Details
| To howl or not to howl? Possible genetic associates of howling behaviour in dogs Aida T.Larionov1, Zsombor Varga1, 2, Máté Varga2, Enikő- Kubinyi3, 4, Tamás Faragó1. 1BARKS Lab, Department of Ethology, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest Hungary.2Fishgenetics Lab, Department of Genetics, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest Hungary.3MTA- ELTE Lendület "Momentum" Companion Animal Research Group, Budapest Hungary.4NAP Canine Brain Research Group, Budapest Hungary |
Abstract
Domestication rapidly reshaped behavior by selecting for social tolerance and reduced stress reactivity (HPA axis). Under the domestication syndrome hypothesis, such selection can cause correlated shifts in neural crest-derived tissues, linking pigmentation, morphology, and vocal behavior. In dogs, genetic distance from wolves correlates with a decline in howling, but the underlying mechanism remains unclear. A previous GWAS identified two SNPs associated with howling: one within LTO1 and another near SLC38A11. Our Sanger resequencing also implicated a G>A variant in LTO1. To test whether LTO1 harbors variants associated with reduced howling, we long-range amplified and Oxford Nanopore-sequenced LTO1 in 71 canids (25 non-howling dogs, 30 howling dogs, 14 grey wolves) and performed masked joint variant calling. LTO1 showed no fixed group-specific mutations; instead, multiple sites displayed allele-frequency shifts, with the strongest signal separating non-howling dogs from howling dogs+wolves. These findings support polygenic, frequency-based differentiation associated with reduced howling and may provide insights into the evolution of complex vocal communication.
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