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Ecological niche modelling as a tool to identify candidate indigenous chicken ecotypes of Tigray (Ethiopia)

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Title Ecological niche modelling as a tool to identify candidate indigenous chicken ecotypes of Tigray (Ethiopia)
 
Creator Gebru, Gebreslassie
Belay, G.
Vallejo Trujillo, A.
Dessie, Tadelle
Gheyas, A.
Hanotte, Olivier H.
 
Subject indigenous breeds
chickens
poultry
genetics
 
Description The Tigray region is an ancient entry route for the domestic chickens into Africa. The oldest African chicken bones were found in this region at Mezber, a pre-Aksumite rural farming settlement. They were dated to around 800–400 BCE. Since then, the farming communities of the region have integrated chicken into their livelihoods. The region is also recognised for its high chicken-to-human population ratio and diverse and complex geography, ranging from 500 to 4,000 m above sea level (m.a.s.l.). More than 15 agro-ecological zones have been described. Following exotic chicken introductions, the proportion of indigenous chicken is now 70% only in the region. It calls for the characterisation of indigenous Tigrayan chicken ecotypes and their habitats. This study reports an Ecological Niche Modelling using MaxEnt to characterise the habitats of 16 indigenous village chicken populations of Tigray. A total of 34 ecological and landscape variables: climatic (22), soil (eight), vegetation, and land cover (four), were included. We applied Principal Component Analysis correlation, and MaxentVariableSelection procedures to select the most contributing and uncorrelated variables. The selected variables were three climatic (bio5 = maximum temperature of the warmest month, bio8 = mean temperature of the wettest quarter, bio13 = precipitation of the wettest month), three vegetation and land cover (grassland, forest land, and cultivated land proportional areas), and one soil (clay content). Following our analysis, we identified four main chicken agro-ecologies defining four candidates indigenous Tigrayan chicken ecotypes. The study provides baseline information for phenotypic and genetic characterisation as well as conservation interventions of indigenous Tigrayan chickens.
 
Date 2022-09-30
2022-10-20T14:28:01Z
2022-10-20T14:28:01Z
 
Type Journal Article
 
Identifier Gebru, G., Belay, G., Vallejo-Trujillo, A., Dessie, T., Gheyas, A. and Hanotte, O. 2022. Ecological niche modelling as a tool to identify candidate indigenous chicken ecotypes of Tigray (Ethiopia). Frontiers in Genetics 13:968961.
1664-8021
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/125140
https://doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2022.968961
 
Language en
 
Rights CC-BY-4.0
Open Access
 
Publisher Frontiers Media SA
 
Source Frontiers in Genetics