Islands of the Zadar Archipelago – a Maternal Perspective

The goal of this research was to determine genetic diversity of the islands of the Zadar archipelago, and genetic distances between them, but also from Mainland and other islands in Eastern Adriatic. Altogether 343 mtDNAs were used for the analysis, from the islands Pag, Ugljan, Pa{; ; ; ; man, Dugiotok and Vrgada, and mainland city Zadar with its hinterland. Although all detected mtDNA haplogroups were typical European, the distribution of subhaplogroups was different, than expected, from other Croatian and European populations. The results showed a high genetic diversity on all investigated islands, some of the islands revealed no genetic distances between populations, some rare and private lineages were discovered, and tentative founder lineages were detected. Also, the islands from the archipelago showed to be more closely related to respective Mainland, than other island groups of the Eastern Adriatic. In general, high diversity of haplogroups and haplotypes, no significant genetic distances between islands and relative genetic closeness to Mainland indicate a substantial flow of maternal lineages, recent migrations and the city of Zadar and hinterland as an origin point of today’s inhabitants. Also, evolutionary forces, such as genetic drift and population bottlenecks shaped the current maternal genetic landscape of the islands of Eastern Adriatic, which are still a great source of information for population genetics as they represent a good example of present day genetic isolates.