SUPREME-Project: Identification of a primary population of South American domestic camelids in the provinces of Antonio Quijarro and Enrique Baldivieso (department of Potosí, Bolivia) using the phenotypic variations of coat colour

摘要

In order to test the existence of primary populations among domesticated South American Camelids (SAC) a survey was done in two provinces of the Department of Potosí (Bolivia) in September 1998 on seven flocks of 320 llamas on 3 sites (Uyuni, Villa Alota and Colchani) with, respectively, 105, 152 and 63 animals by a team of workers from 2 institutions members of the SUPREME project: UMSA/La Paz and INRA/France. The ecoregion (a semi arid /arid puna, above 3500 m of altitude) is a zone of extensive traditional llama breeding classified S1 or S4 in the mapping of llama breeding. The primarity, which is characterised by an accumulation of visible mutants after domestication, was measured here by indices of phenotypic primarity colour, (IPPC), according to four phenotypic colour dimensions: I. Pigmentary pattern, II. Type of eumelanine, III. Alteration of pigment and IV. Type of white design (split in two sub-dimensions). Each IPPC may vary from 0 (only one phenotype of the dimension is present = fixation: no primarity), to 1 (all the colour phenotypes of a given dimension are present in the flock: state of full primarity). After pooling flocks of each site, it appeared that all the IPPC had a value of 1 except IPPC and IPPC for sites A (Uyuni) and C(Colchani). This was due to the very low frequency of the doberman phenotypes in Dimension I and chocolate brown (= turco) in dimension II, in the total population. It has been concluded that the flocks in the survey belong to a population of the primary type. The sites are the summits of a triangle of sides of respectively 120, 150 and 40 km. It remains to establish if the all of these SI and S4 zones and other llama breeding zones in Bolivia are stocked by the same primary population.