In an On Biology blog post, Bill Ollier discusses an article on the multi-generational impact of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster on dogs that were left behind in Chernobyl in 1986.
Image by Okan Caliskan from Pixabay The blast and fire that resulted from the Chernobyl Nuclear disaster in April 1986 in Ukraine was the most disastrous the world has encountered. The radioactive fallout released from this event was around 400 times more than that released by the nuclear bomb that struck Hiroshima in Japan. Furthermore, in addition to the radiation, major amounts of highly toxic heavy metals and both inorganic and organic compounds such as pesticides were also released.
A recent article published in Canine Medicine and Genetics reports on the multi-generational impact of radioactive fallout and other environmental hazards, such as lead, pesticides and volatile organic compounds on dogs that were left behind after the disaster. Given the average life span of a domestic dog, a considerable number of generations will have turned over and many litters will have been born since.
The two different populations of dogs in the study exhibit significant genetic diversity between each other. This is interesting in its own right and perhaps unexpected given the 16 km distance between them. The difference observed might be explained by the ‘founder’ population in the more rural area having greater representation of working or guard dog breeds, and the other ‘founder’ population in the urban area being composed of smaller ‘family friendly’ breeds.
Directional selection occurs when individuals with traits on one side of their mean distribution in their population survive better than those on the other side when a new external pressure is applied. In other words, this is a mechanism for shifting the mean value of the distribution of the trait in a population towards its optimisation for survival in the new environment.
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