The research team, led by Lingfeng Kong and Wanwan Peng of Tarim University in Xinjiang alongside collaborators at Osh State University in the Kyrgyz Republic, assembled one of the most extensive genomic datasets yet compiled for Central Asian sheep. After rigorous quality control and filtering to remove closely related individuals, the researchers retained 48,902 single nucleotide polymorphisms, the tiny DNA variations that serve as genomic landmarks, from 722 sheep representing 14 distinct populations. These included the focal Chinese Kirghiz breed, three Kyrgyzstan local populations known as Ala-Too, Gissar, and Kyrgyz native sheep, and a broader comparative panel spanning Kazakh, Dolang, Bashibai, Afshari, Chinese Merino, German Texel, Irish Suffolk, Moghani, Norduz, and Tibetan sheep.

The Chinese Kirghiz sheep, which inhabit the eastern Pamir region near the China–Kyrgyzstan border, presented a striking genetic profile. Their observed heterozygosity, a direct measure of the proportion of gene copies carrying different alleles at a given locus, stood at just 0.249, notably lower than their expected heterozygosity of 0.355. This gap between observed and expected values produced an elevated inbreeding coefficient, FIS, of 0.296, signaling a substantial deficit of heterozygotes that likely reflects mating among related individuals within geographically constrained herds. Yet despite this elevated inbreeding signal, the breed retained relatively high nucleotide diversity, measured at π = 0.356, indicating that the overall pool of genetic variation within the population remains far from depleted.

Runs of homozygosity, long stretches of DNA where both chromosomes carry identical variants inherited from a common ancestor, told a more reassuring story. The mean genomic inbreeding coefficient derived from these runs, FROH, was a modest 0.009, suggesting that while recent mating patterns may skew heterozygosity estimates at individual loci, the breed has not experienced the severe, sustained bottlenecks that leave dramatic homozygous tracts across the genome. This distinction between locus-level inbreeding signals and genome-wide runs of homozygosity illustrates why modern conservation genomics increasingly relies on multiple, complementary metrics rather than any single statistic.

Principal component analysis, a dimensionality-reduction technique that projects genetic variation onto orthogonal axes of greatest variance, clearly separated the Chinese Kirghiz sheep from the three Kyrgyzstan local populations. However, complementary ancestry and gene-flow analyses painted a more interconnected picture, indicating that despite the differentiation detected by PCA, genetic material has continued to move across the border region. This apparent tension between differentiation and connectivity is not contradictory; it reflects the reality that populations can maintain distinct identities while still exchanging migrants at low but meaningful rates, particularly in mountainous landscapes where valleys channel both animal movement and human trade.

To quantify the degree of separation, the researchers calculated pairwise fixation index values, or FST, between the Chinese Kirghiz and each Kyrgyzstan local breed using balanced resampling to correct for the severe sample-size imbalance in the original dataset. The balanced estimates came in at 0.099 for Ala-Too, 0.092 for Gissar, and 0.098 for Kyrgyz native sheep. These values fall within the moderate range of genetic differentiation, confirming that the populations are genetically distinguishable but not so divergent as to represent entirely separate gene pools. The consistency of the three estimates, all hovering just below 0.10, suggests a shared regional history with recent but limited gene flow.

Perhaps the most technically innovative aspect of the study was its use of machine learning classifiers, specifically LightGBM and XGBoost, two gradient-boosting frameworks that have become workhorses of modern computational biology. In the full, unbalanced dataset, these classifiers achieved near-perfect discrimination between the Chinese Kirghiz and Kyrgyzstan local sheep, with feature importance rankings generated through SHAP values and LASSO regularization highlighting specific SNPs as candidate markers of population identity. However, when the researchers applied balanced resampling to equalize sample sizes across groups, both classification performance and feature stability dropped noticeably. This sensitivity to sample composition serves as a cautionary tale for the growing number of studies that deploy machine learning on genomic data without adequately testing whether their results are artifacts of unbalanced training sets.

The researchers went further, intersecting regions of low nucleotide diversity in the Chinese Kirghiz genome with elevated pairwise FST values to identify 395 candidate genes potentially involved in local adaptation. Among these were CAMK2A, involved in calcium signaling and neural function; CACNA1C, a calcium channel gene; EPHB1 and ROBO1, both implicated in nervous system development; GRID1 and GRID2, glutamate receptor genes; and RXFP2, a gene well known in livestock genetics for its association with horn morphology. However, when the researchers subjected these candidate genes to Gene Ontology and KEGG pathway enrichment analyses with multiple-testing correction, no term remained statistically significant. This sobering result underscores the difficulty of moving from population-level genomic signals to confirmed functional adaptation.

The study’s most important methodological contribution may be its explicit treatment of the confounding effects of sample-size imbalance and population structure on machine learning results. When the researchers applied principal component adjustment to their association testing, none of the prioritized SNPs remained significant after false discovery rate correction at the threshold of FDR < 0.01. This finding demonstrates that what appears to be a robust machine-learning signal in an unbalanced dataset can evaporate entirely once population structure is properly accounted for. The authors are careful to frame their 395 candidate genes as population-informative markers requiring further validation rather than as confirmed adaptive variants, a level of methodological transparency that is still relatively rare in the application of machine learning to population genomics.

For the pastoralists who have tended Kirghiz sheep across the Pamir for generations, the study provides scientific grounding for what they have long known intuitively: their animals are distinct, shaped by the particular demands of high-altitude grazing, harsh winters, and centuries of selection within a geographically bounded landscape. For conservation biologists, the moderate FST values and evidence of ongoing gene flow suggest that the Chinese Kirghiz and Kyrgyzstan local breeds represent connected but distinguishable components of a broader Central Asian sheep metapopulation, a framing that has direct implications for how breeding programs and genetic resource conservation efforts should be designed across national borders. And for the growing community of researchers applying machine learning to genomic data, the study offers a methodological template: always test your classifiers under balanced conditions, always adjust for population structure, and never mistake a confident prediction for a confirmed biological mechanism.

Subject of Research: Population genomic differentiation between Chinese Kirghiz sheep and Kyrgyzstan local sheep breeds using SNP data and machine learning classifiers

Article Title: Machine learning-assisted genomic characterization of population differentiation between Chinese Kirghiz and Kyrgyzstan local sheep

Article References: Kong, L., Peng, W., Peng, Y., Li, Y., Zhu, L., Yang, R., Erkinbay, A., Kou, F., Liao, Y., Mutalifu, M., Kursantbek, A., Rakhima, M., Roza, A., Abdugani, A., Mukhatai, G., & Liu, S. (2026). Machine learning-assisted genomic characterization of population differentiation between Chinese Kirghiz and Kyrgyzstan local sheep. BMC Genomics. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-026-13459-3

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12864-026-13459-3

Keywords: Chinese Kirghiz sheep, Kyrgyzstan local sheep, population genomics, genetic differentiation, machine learning, SNP markers, FST, runs of homozygosity, LightGBM, XGBoost, conservation genomics, Central Asia

The case, published in Frontiers in Genetics by Dandan Li of Shiyan Maternal and Child Health Hospital and colleagues, centers on a phenomenon known as a run of homozygosity, or ROH. These are long, uninterrupted segments of the genome in which the two homologous chromosomes carry identical alleles, as if the same ancestral haplotype had been inherited from both parents. ROH can arise from several causes, including parental consanguinity, population genetic drift, positive selection, or chromosomal events such as uniparental disomy, in which both copies or a portion of a chromosome pair are inherited from a single parent. Distinguishing among these origins is the central challenge of prenatal counseling for such findings.

The mother underwent amniocentesis at 18 weeks of gestation. Conventional G-banded karyotyping of cultured amniocytes at 550-band resolution revealed a normal female karyotype of 46,XX, with no numerical or structural abnormalities of chromosome 11. Chromosomal microarray analysis, using a high-density chip with roughly 550,000 non-polymorphic markers and 200,000 SNP markers spaced at an average interval of about 1.7 kilobases, likewise found no copy-number changes involving chromosome 11. The initial NIPT finding was therefore classified as a false positive, a well-documented occurrence that can stem from confined placental mosaicism, maternal copy-number variants, circulating maternal tumor DNA, or simple technical noise.

But the microarray did reveal something unexpected: a copy-neutral 10.42 megabase run of homozygosity spanning chromosome 6q25.3q27, corresponding to positions 157,776,570 through 168,194,615 on the GRCh37 reference genome. Because neither ROH nor uniparental disomy alters chromosome copy number or gross architecture, conventional cytogenetic karyotyping cannot detect them. SNP-based microarray can identify regions of homozygosity, but it only reliably detects isodisomy, the form of uniparental disomy in which two identical copies are inherited from one parent. Heterodisomy, in which two different copies from one parent are inherited, requires different tools entirely.

To resolve the parental origin of the homozygous segment, the team turned to trio-based whole-exome sequencing, comparing fetal, maternal, and paternal genotypes across the entire interval. The logic is elegant. If a fetus is homozygous for an allele while the father is wild-type and the mother carries it, that pattern supports maternal uniparental disomy. The reverse supports paternal disomy. But if the fetus is homozygous and both parents are heterozygous, or one parent is homozygous and the other carries the same allele, the genotype is compatible with biparental inheritance and does not support uniparental disomy. Across the 10.42 megabase interval, the team identified 66 informative SNPs, every one of which was consistent with one allele contributed by each parent. No informative SNP showed fetal homozygosity with one parent being wild-type for the fetal allele, formally excluding segmental uniparental disomy of chromosome 6.

The distinction matters enormously for chromosome 6, which harbors known imprinted loci. Full-chromosome maternal uniparental disomy of chromosome 6 has been associated with intrauterine growth restriction, preterm birth, and variable neurodevelopmental phenotypes, while paternal disomy or segmental paternal disomy involving the 6q24 imprinting control region causes transient neonatal diabetes mellitus. Critically, the well-characterized 6q24 imprinted region lies proximal to the 6q25.3q27 segment reported here. Upon review of curated imprinted gene databases, the 10.42 megabase interval does not overlap any established, clinically relevant imprinted genes or imprinting-control regions, meaning any theoretical phenotypic risk from segmental disomy limited to this region would arise predominantly from unmasking autosomal-recessive pathogenic variants rather than from disrupted genomic imprinting.

The homozygous segment contains several clinically relevant genes, including ARID1B, WTAP, DLL1, TBP, SYNJ2, TIAM2, PHF10, MAP3K4, and PSMB1, none of which are well-documented imprinted loci. Pathogenic variants in several of these genes are linked to developmental disorders. Trio-based exome sequencing found no pathogenic or likely pathogenic homozygous variants associated with autosomal-recessive disease within the interval. The genome-wide homozygosity profile showed only this single discrete segment, with no additional autosomal runs of homozygosity, a pattern inconsistent with the multiple, widely distributed segments typically observed in offspring of consanguineous couples. Instead, the team concluded, the most parsimonious explanation is that a shared ancestral haplotype present in the general population was inherited independently from each parent, consistent with population-level shared ancestry rather than cryptic parental relatedness. The parents, a 29-year-old woman and her 32-year-old husband, are non-consanguineous.

Prenatal ultrasound did identify one finding: a single umbilical artery, classified as isolated because no other structural malformations, facial dysmorphisms, cardiac anomalies, renal anomalies, or intrauterine growth restriction were detected. After genetic counseling, the parents decided to continue the pregnancy. At 40 weeks and 2 days of gestation, a 3,450-gram female infant was born via vaginal delivery, with Apgar scores of 9, 10, and 10 at one, five, and ten minutes. A complete physical examination was normal. At the six-month follow-up, comprehensive pediatric evaluation showed all growth indices within normal age-matched reference values, with motor, social-communicative, visual-auditory, and neurological performances consistent with expected developmental milestones.

The authors are careful to note that important residual genetic risks remain even after excluding uniparental disomy and identifiable homozygous pathogenic variants. Whole-exome sequencing primarily targets coding exons and splice-site boundaries and cannot reliably detect deep-intronic variants, distant regulatory-element variants, repeat expansions, certain complex structural variants, or low-level somatic mosaicism. It also does not assess DNA methylation status, so epigenetic abnormalities including imprinting defects cannot be fully ruled out by short-read exome sequencing alone. And although isolated single umbilical artery is most often a benign incidental finding, it carries a weak statistical association with subtle developmental risks that cannot be entirely excluded prenatally. The team found no compelling molecular evidence supporting a causal link between the biparentally inherited segment and the single umbilical artery.

For prenatal counselors encountering runs of homozygosity on the long arm of chromosome 6, the case offers a clear framework: differentiate biparental inheritance from segmental uniparental disomy given the imprinting potential of chromosome 6, integrate multiple lines of evidence rather than relying on a single molecular test, and recommend long-term postnatal follow-up even when prenatal findings appear benign. The authors argue that combining NIPT, detailed prenatal ultrasound, karyotype analysis, chromosomal microarray, whole-exome sequencing, and genetic counseling will prove a more accurate risk assessment for the prenatal diagnosis of both runs of homozygosity and uniparental disomy. In an era when whole-exome trios are increasingly routine in clinical genetics, this case adds to a limited but growing literature showing that large homozygous segments can, in the right circumstances, carry no clinical consequence at all.

Subject of Research: Prenatal diagnosis of a homozygous chromosome 6q25.3q27 segment

Article Title: Case Report: Prenatal diagnosis and genetic counseling for a homozygous segment spanning chromosome 6q25.3q27 with normal phenotype

Article References: Li, D., Hu, J., Wu, J., & Bian, X. (2026). Case Report: Prenatal diagnosis and genetic counseling for a homozygous segment spanning chromosome 6q25.3q27 with normal phenotype. Frontiers in Genetics, 17, Article 1935109. https://doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2026.1935109

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fgene.2026.1935109

Keywords: runs of homozygosity, uniparental disomy, chromosomal microarray, whole-exome sequencing, prenatal diagnosis, genetic counseling, chromosome 6, NIPT, Case, Report, Prenatal, diagnosis

The study, led by Chang Huang, Zhiyuan Ren, and Nengshui Ding of Jiangxi Agricultural University together with colleagues at Aonong Group and Jiangxi Science and Technology Normal University, focused on runs of homozygosity, or ROH. These are continuous segments of the genome in which an animal carries two identical copies of the same ancestral DNA sequence, one from each parent. When two parents share recent common ancestors, their offspring are likely to inherit matching segments on both sides, producing these long homozygous tracts. Because their length reflects how far back in the pedigree the shared ancestor lived, ROH provide a genome-wide, DNA-level measure of inbreeding that is often more accurate and more informative than traditional pedigree-based estimates, which depend on complete and accurate record keeping that commercial herds rarely have.

To capture this signal, the team analyzed genotypes from 5,859 pigs after stringent quality control, drawn from the three American breed populations. They defined ROH as segments of at least one megabase, one million DNA letters, and restricted their search to autosomes 1 through 18, excluding the sex chromosomes to keep the analysis comparable across males and females. Across all animals they detected a remarkable 416,225 individual ROH segments. That sheer number illustrates how pervasive autozygosity is in commercial breeding populations, where decades of selection for lean growth, litter size, and carcass quality have reshaped the genome through both deliberate selection and the unavoidable relatedness that accumulates in closed breeding lines.

One of the clearest findings was that the three breeds differ in their overall ROH burden. American Duroc pigs showed the highest individual-level ROH of the three populations. This pattern is consistent with the breeding structure of terminal sire lines, which are often maintained in relatively small nucleus herds under intense selection for growth and meat quality, conditions that tend to concentrate ancestral haplotypes. Landrace and Yorkshire, maternal breeds selected primarily for reproductive performance, showed different ROH architectures. The differences among breeds matter because they suggest that the historical sources of inbreeding, whether from small effective population sizes, founder effects, or selection sweeps, have acted with different intensities in each genetic line.

The heart of the study, however, lay in asking whether this autozygosity has consequences that can be measured in the barn. The researchers computed for each animal a genomic inbreeding coefficient, FROH, defined as the proportion of the autosomal genome covered by ROH. They then tested whether FROH was associated with a panel of production-related traits, using mixed statistical models that included a genomic relationship matrix. This matrix accounts for the ordinary kinship among all animals in the dataset, a crucial control, because relatives resemble each other both genetically and phenotypically for reasons that have nothing to do with inbreeding per se. Without this correction, any association between FROH and a trait could simply reflect family structure rather than the specific effect of homozygous segments.

Across 51 population-by-trait tests, the team identified 19 nominally significant associations between FROH and production traits at a probability threshold of 0.05. Thirteen of these survived correction for the false discovery rate using the Benjamini-Hochberg procedure, a statistical safeguard that limits the expected proportion of false positives among the declared findings. The pattern of surviving associations was strikingly uneven. American Landrace showed the broadest set of FDR-supported associations, Duroc had fewer, and in Yorkshire the nominal associations were restricted to body length and body height, with only the body height association holding up after correction. This breed-by-breed heterogeneity is the study’s central message: the genomic consequences of inbreeding are not a universal constant but depend on which population is being examined and which trait is being measured.

Why should different breeds show different inbreeding effects? The likely explanation lies in the concept of inbreeding load. Recessive deleterious variants are scattered across every genome, but their identity and genomic location differ among populations, shaped by each breed’s unique history of selection and drift. When autozygous segments arise, they expose whatever recessive variants happen to lie within them. If a breed’s deleterious burden happens to overlap regions influencing, say, body length or backfat, inbreeding will depress those particular traits. If the burden lies elsewhere, different traits will suffer. The population-specific associations observed here are exactly what this model predicts, and they argue strongly against a one-size-fits-all approach to managing inbreeding in multi-breed breeding programs.

The study also probed two more subtle questions. First, the researchers asked whether the effect of FROH differed between males and females, testing FROH-by-sex interactions. They found 45 estimable interaction tests, with some nominally significant results in Duroc, but none of these survived false discovery rate correction, meaning the evidence for sex-specific inbreeding effects remains tentative at best. Second, they used segmented regression models to look for thresholds, points beyond which additional autozygosity might cause a disproportionate decline in performance. Here they detected 25 nominally significant threshold responses, but again none survived FDR correction, with the smallest corrected value reaching 0.118. Importantly, the candidate breakpoints suggested by these exploratory analyses differed by population, trait, and ROH length class, hinting that if true thresholds exist, they are not universal values but properties of each population’s genome.

The distinction between ROH length classes deserves attention because it carries biological meaning. Short ROH reflect ancient shared ancestors, often reaching back many generations or even to the founding of the breed, while long ROH flag recent inbreeding, typically within the last few generations. Long ROH are therefore the ones most responsive to current mating decisions. The observation that associations and candidate thresholds varied across length classes suggests that old and new inbreeding may contribute differently to trait variation, a finding that could eventually help breeders distinguish the inbreeding they can control through mating plans from the legacy burden embedded in the breed’s history.

For the pork industry, the practical implications are concrete. Genomic inbreeding coefficients computed from routine SNP chip data could be incorporated into selection indices and mate allocation algorithms, allowing breeding companies to balance genetic gain against the accumulation of autozygosity on a population-specific basis. Rather than imposing a generic inbreeding ceiling, programs could weight the traits that are demonstrably sensitive to FROH in each line. The authors note that their findings provide a basis for population-specific evaluation of inbreeding load and for improving genomic management strategies in commercial pig breeding. As genomic selection accelerates the rate of genetic change, it also accelerates the loss of genetic diversity, making tools that measure and manage autozygosity directly from DNA increasingly essential. This study demonstrates both the promise of that approach and the statistical caution needed to interpret it: the strongest signals are real and breed-specific, while the more tantalizing patterns of sex effects and inbreeding thresholds remain, for now, hypotheses for larger datasets to test.

Subject of Research: Associations between runs of homozygosity-based genomic inbreeding and production traits in three commercial pig populations

Article Title: Runs of homozygosity reveal associations between autozygosity and production traits in three commercial pig populations

Article References: Huang, C., Ren, Z., Yang, W., Meng, Q., Wu, G., Chen, H., & Ding, N. (2026). Runs of homozygosity reveal associations between autozygosity and production traits in three commercial pig populations. BMC Genomics. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-026-13326-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12864-026-13326-1

Keywords: runs of homozygosity, autozygosity, genomic inbreeding, pigs, Duroc, Landrace, Yorkshire, production traits, FROH, genomic selection, animal breeding, quantitative genetics

An international research team led by Arne Bielke and Elmira Mohandesan of the University of Vienna, working with colleagues in Sweden, Wales, the United States and New Zealand, generated genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism data from Kaimanawa Horses and integrated these results with previously generated mitochondrial and Y-chromosome markers. The comparison set comprised 22 domestic breeds, allowing the researchers to place the feral population within the broader landscape of global horse genetic diversity. The study was conducted in collaboration with the Kaimanawa Heritage Horse society and with the informed consent of horse owners who provided hair samples, photographs and background information on individual animals.

The genetic story that emerged is one of multiple founding contributions layered on top of one another. Admixture analyses showed that Kaimanawa Horses share genetic components mainly associated with British pony lineages, Thoroughbreds, Arabians and draft breeds, a pattern consistent with historical records describing the varied stock that contributed to the population during the colonial era and afterwards. Rather than descending from a single narrow source, the herd represents a living archive of the mixed breeding practices of nineteenth and twentieth century New Zealand, when working horses of many types were moved across pastoral land and often left to fend for themselves.

Yet the same analyses also documented the genetic costs of isolation. The population exhibits reduced heterozygosity, elevated inbreeding and an effective population size estimated at fewer than 50 individuals, a threshold widely regarded by conservation geneticists as dangerously low for long-term viability. The researchers traced this erosion of diversity to the population’s isolation and to recent demographic contraction, driven in part by management interventions. Kaimanawa Horses are subject to periodic musters, in which animals are rounded up and removed from the ranges to keep the population within an officially mandated ceiling, a practice that inevitably influences which genes persist in the free-ranging herd.

One of the most technically revealing aspects of the study involved runs of homozygosity, the long stretches of the genome where an individual inherits identical DNA segments from both parents, signaling recent or ancient inbreeding. By measuring the inbreeding coefficient derived from these runs and stratifying them by length class, the team could distinguish between older inbreeding events and more recent mating among relatives. The results confirmed that Kaimanawa Horses carry a substantial burden of homozygous segments relative to many domestic breeds, underscoring how founder effects, small population size and restricted gene flow have combined to shape the population’s genomic landscape.

Population structure analyses identified two distinct genetic subgroups within the herd, suggesting that geography and management history have produced detectable internal differentiation. Horses captured in different zones of the Kaimanawa Ranges, including the Argo Valley, southern zones and a designated capture zone, showed patterns consistent with limited movement between groups. Linkage disequilibrium decay, a measure of how quickly genetic variants lose their statistical association with physical distance along chromosomes, provided further evidence of the population’s demographic trajectory, while historical estimates of effective population size reconstructed over roughly the last seventeen generations revealed a declining trend that has accelerated in recent generations.

Perhaps the most striking discovery came from the paternal line. Analysis of the male-specific region of the Y-chromosome in 26 stallions revealed private paternal haplotypes that are absent from modern breed reference panels, indicating that the Kaimanawa population has retained unique paternal diversity that has disappeared, or was never present, in the registered breeds used for comparison. Mitochondrial DNA analysis of the maternal side complemented this picture, placing Kaimanawa maternal lineages within the broader spectrum of global horse diversity while highlighting the population’s distinctiveness. Together, these uniparental markers demonstrate that feral populations can serve as reservoirs of genetic variation lost from managed breeding programs.

The implications for conservation and management are considerable. An effective population size below 50 places the herd in a category where loss of genetic variation and inbreeding depression, including reduced fertility and foal survival, become realistic concerns. The authors argue that genomic approaches of the kind used in this study can directly inform management strategies, for example by guiding which animals are retained or relocated during musters to preserve the two genetic subgroups and maximize the retention of the population’s rare alleles and unique haplotypes. Without such informed intervention, the very management practices designed to control the population’s ecological footprint could inadvertently erode the genetic legacy that makes it scientifically and culturally valuable.

Beyond New Zealand, the study offers a template for understanding how founder history, demographic processes and human management jointly shape the genomes of free-ranging animal populations around the world. Feral horses occupy a contested space between pest and heritage icon, and their management is often decided in the absence of genetic data. By demonstrating that a feral population can harbor both documented vulnerability and irreplaceable diversity, the Kaimanawa work makes a compelling case that conservation genomics belongs at the center of such debates. As the researchers conclude, these findings not only illuminate the past of one of New Zealand’s most iconic wild animals but also support future research and evidence-based stewardship of feral horse populations wherever they roam.

Subject of Research: Genomic analysis of demographic history and genetic diversity in New Zealand's feral Kaimanawa Horses

Article Title: Demographic history and management practices shape the genomic landscape of New Zealand’s feral Kaimanawa Horses

Article References: Bielke, A., Ardestani, S. S., Sharif, B., Orozco-ter Wengel, P., Fitak, R. R., Wallner, B., Wilson, K., & Mohandesan, E. (2026). Demographic history and management practices shape the genomic landscape of New Zealand’s feral Kaimanawa Horses. BMC Genomics. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-026-13345-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12864-026-13345-y

Keywords: Kaimanawa Horses, feral horses, population genomics, conservation genomics, inbreeding, New Zealand, genetic diversity, Y-chromosome, effective population size, runs of homozygosity, horse breeds, population structure