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We carried out a nationwide survey to morphologically characterize and identify the geographic distribution of Ethiopian donkey populations. Here we re-evaluated some of the donkey populations previously identified and explored new ones from which we confirmed the existence of six distinct donkey populations and rejected one donkey population that was misidentified previously. We used twelve selected morphometric variables that recorded on a total of 569 adult donkeys (289 jacks and 280 jennets) spanning over wide arrays of ecologies in Ethiopia. Mean pairwise multiple comparisons (MPMC) between traits and multivariate analysis were carried out separately for jacks, jennets and aggregated gender. The MPMC showed significant differences between donkey populations for most of the traits studied. Principal component analysis showed that three body heights (height at wither, back and rump) and body length alone account for about 87.5% the total variations (eigenvalue = 10.49) of the 12 measured morphometric variables. Mahalanobis as well as Euclidean distances were also found to be highly significant ( P

Summary We determined the genetic diversity and evolutionary relationships among 26 Chinese indigenous horse breeds and two introduced horse breeds by genotyping these animals for 27 microsatellite loci. The 26 Chinese horse breeds come from 12 different provinces. Two introduced horse breeds were the Mongolia B Horse from Mongolia and the Thoroughbred Horse from the UK. A total of 330 alleles were detected, and the expected heterozygosity ranged from 0.719 (Elenchuns) to 0.780 (Dali). The mean number of alleles among the horse breeds ranged from 6.74 (Hequ) to 8.81 (Debao). Although there were abundant genetic variations found, the genetic differentiation was low between the Chinese horses, which displayed only 2.4% of the total genetic variance among the different breeds. However, genetic differentiation (pairwise FST) among Chinese horses, although moderate, was still apparent and varied from 0.001 for the Guizou–Luoping pair to 0.064 for the Jingjiang–Elenchuns pair. The genetic differentiation patterns and genetic relationships among Chinese horse breeds were also consistent with their geographical distribution. The Thoroughbred and Mongolia B breeds could be discerned as two distinct breeds, but the Mongolia B horse in particular suffered genetic admixture with Chinese horses. The Chinese breeds could be divided into five major groups, i.e. the south or along the Yangtze river group (Bose, Debao, Wenshan, Lichuan, Jianchang, Guizhou, Luoping, Jinjiang and Dali), the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau group (Chaidamu, Hequ, Datong, Yushu, Tibet Grassland and Tibet Valley), the Northeast of China group (Elenchuns, Jilin and Heihe), the Northwest of China group (Kazakh, Yili and Yanqi) and the Inner Mongolia group (Mongolia A, Sanhe, Xinihe,Wuzhumuqin and Sengeng). This grouping pattern was further supported by principal component analysis and structure analysis.