Swedish researcher Carles Vilà questioned how dogs can have such a wide variety of phenotypes within their single species, “Imagine a great dane standing next to a chihuahua” He decided to conduct a study that was to look at where dogs had thought to evolve from - wolves. So he looked at the mitochondrial DNA of the wolves vs domesticated dogs in an attempt to understand the genetic consequences of 2 very different lifestyles. His hypothesis was that in instances where natural selection had been relaxed, for example the dogs would not face as many obstacles as wild dogs would compared to dogs that had been domesticated, and living under the care of humans, that certain mutations would accumulate faster. Less fit dogs were able to live longer and produce offspring, where as in the wild these dogs would not have survived therefore lost the chance to pass their DNA down into their offspring.
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"It is therefore possible that this process led to an increase in functional genetic diversity throughout the entire dog genome," wrote Vilà, "including both genes and elements affecting gene
"It is therefore possible that this process led to an increase in functional genetic diversity throughout the entire dog genome," wrote Vilà, "including both genes and elements affecting gene