How Wild Rabbits Were Domesticated: Genes Reveal Small Changes

Today, you can find all kinds of breeds of domesticated rabbits. Yet what genetic changes actually transformed wild rabbits into domesticated forms has long remained a mystery. Now, scientists have found that many genes controlling the development and the brain and the nervous system were particularly important for rabbit domestication.

Domestication of plants and animals was one of the most important technological revolutions in human history. Animal domestication started as early as 9,000 to 15,000 years ago, when our ancient ancestors domesticated dogs, cattle, sheep, goats and pigs. The rabbit, though, was domesticated much later-about 1,400 years ago-at monasteries in southern France.

In order to learn a bit more about the domestication process, the researchers first sequenced the entire genome of one domestic rabbit in order to develop a reference genome assembly. Then, they resequenced entire genomes of domestic rabbits representing six different breeds and wild rabbits sampled at 14 different places across the Iberian Peninsula and southern France.

So what did they find? In contrast to domestic rabbits, wild rabbits have a very strong flight response, which causes them to be very alert and reactive to survive in the wild. The researchers discovered that rabbit domestication primarily occurred by altering the frequencies of gene variants that were already present in the wild ancestor. Small changes in many genes rather than drastic changes in a few genes caused the domestication.

What was more interesting was that there were very few examples of a gene variant common in domestic rabbits completely replacing the gene variant in wild rabbits. This means that if you release domestic rabbits in the wild, there is an opportunity for back selection at those genes that have been altered during domestication since the variant has rarely been completely lost.

The findings reveal a bit more about how rabbits were domesticated. Not only that, but it's possible that a similar process also occurred in other domestic animals. This sheds a bit more light on a process that revolutionized agricultural practice and paved the way for human civilization.

The findings are published in the journal Science.