[Taxacom] domestication of the house cat

Tue Jul 3 16:45:56 CDT 2007

Neither I have seen the article, sine you do not get it through normal
online subscription until the next couple of days. But it shows once more
the dismal state of how we operate: We know, that this information is only
one or two mouse clicks away, but we can't get it. Not even we from large
scientific institutions, not to speak somebody from the UAE who might be
interested in the story unfolding in his backyard.

At the same time these journals have such a well organized PR apparatus,
obviously geared more towards PR then the real dissemination of scientific
information.

Once more a reason to sign up on Open Access, at least the green road and
make your scientific papers accessible through self archive, and in the
longer run through a change of of science policy, such as happening in the
US National Institute of Health or through member signing up the Berlin
Declaration on Open Access.

This all needs you, dear colleagues to make it happen: start self archiving,
ask your institution to help doing this. 

Donat

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Zander [mailto:Richard.Zander at mobot.org] 
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2007 10:23 PM
To: Donat Agosti; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: RE: [Taxacom] domestication of the house cat

Well, let's see. I've not seen the actual article, but neither has most
of us since we need subscriptions to the paper and journals involved.

Let's extrapolate from what we know just from the posting on Taxacom.
Females are cited, so mitochondrial loci are involved, which track
genealogies of females (unless you have some kind of mitochondrial
capture). Doubtless there were too few data in the study or the
sequences just did not give the right resolution, so the domesticated
cat clade is really a multifurcation of five branches. So where did the
branches end? Doubtless near the Libyan clade. How much nearer the
Libyan clade than some other clade? This is the nut of the article yet
the word "five" is mentioned (actually denoting bad resolution) and no
other mathematical term, such as the bootstrap value evaluating the
closeness of domestic and Libyan variants, is given. 

Well, probably the domestic cat is pretty well supported as near the
Libyan wild version, but we don't know for sure without reading the
article. That's for the female. What if the male was from the European
or any other variant? Half the genome is then contributed by this other
variant.

My book on cats says my cat Lulubelle is a combination of European and
African wild types, based on morphology I think. Is this wrong or right?

Even if the domestic cat is truly in all respects most closely related
to the Libyan wild cat, my point is that we have a tendency to accept as
essentially correct statements that have considerable uncertainty.
Considerable in this case can mean not much but enough that scientists
should not act on the assertion. 

In other fields that use statistics and math, like psychology and
ecology, a low level of uncertainty is tolerated (5 % or 1 %). We have
not yet advanced to this state in systematics even though we laud and
respect articles on phylogenetics based on statistics and that involve
such mathematical expressions as "five." 

******************************
Richard H. Zander 
Voice: 314-577-0276
Missouri Botanical Garden
PO Box 299
St. Louis, MO 63166-0299 USA
richard.zander at mobot.org
Web sites: http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resbot/
and http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/bfna/bfnamenu.htm
For FedEx and UPS use:
Missouri Botanical Garden
4344 Shaw Blvd.
St. Louis, MO 63110
******************************

> -----Original Message-----
> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:taxacom-
> bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Donat Agosti
> Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2007 1:59 PM
> To: 'Donat Agosti'; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] domestication of the house cat
> 
> p.S. the cat made it even into the op/eds of NYT - a very unusual
success
> for a science story!
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/02/opinion/02mon4.html?em&ex=1183608000&e
n=
> 17
> 6a3b5340060551&ei=5087%0A
> 
> 
> Donat
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Donat Agosti
> Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2007 11:32 AM
> To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: [Taxacom] domestication of the house cat
> 
> Talking about inbreeding: just five wild cat females at the base of
the
> domesticated cats, and that not in Egypt.
> 
> 
> 
> Here a comment in NYT ,
> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/science/29cat.html?em
>
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/science/29cat.html?em&ex=1183608000&e
n=
> 50
> e07737cb5b7f64&ei=5087%0A>
&ex=1183608000&en=50e07737cb5b7f64&ei=5087%0A
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Some 10,000 years ago, somewhere in the Near East, an audacious
wildcat
> crept into one of the crude villages of early human settlers, the
first to
> domesticate wheat and barley. There she felt safe from her many
predators
> in
> the region, such as hyenas and larger cats.
> 
> The rodents that infested the settlers' homes and granaries were
> sufficient
> prey. Seeing that she was earning her keep, the settlers tolerated
her,
> and
> their children greeted her kittens with delight.
> 
> At least five females of the wildcat subspecies known as Felis
silvestris
> lybica accomplished this delicate transition from forest to village.
And
> from these five matriarchs all the world's 600 million house cats are
> descended.
> 
> A scientific basis for this scenario has been established by Carlos A.
> Driscoll of the National Cancer Institute
>
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/nat
io
> na
> l_cancer_institute/index.html?inline=nyt-org>  and his colleagues. He
> spent
> more than six years collecting species of wildcat in places as far
apart
> as
> Scotland, Israel, Namibia and Mongolia. He then analyzed the DNA of
the
> wildcats and of many house cats and fancy cats.
> 
> And here the original source
> http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1139518
> 
> 
> 
> Donat
> 
> 
> 
> Dr. Donat Agosti
> 
> Science Consultant
> 
> Research Associate, American Museum of Natural History and Naturmuseum
der
> Burgergemeinde Bern
> 
> Email: agosti at amnh.org
> 
> Web:  <http://antbase.org/> http://antbase.org
> 
> Blog:  <http://biodivcontext.blogspot.com/>
> http://biodivcontext.blogspot.com/
> 
> Skype: agostileu
> 
> CV <http://antbase.org/agosticv_2003.html>
> 
> Current Location <http://antbase.org/agosti_loc_bern.kmz>
> 
> Dalmaziquai 45
> 
> 3005 Bern
> 
> Switzerland
> 
> +41-31-351 7152
> 
> 
> 
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