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Understanding the origin, dispersal and evolution of globally important livestock species such as cattle and sheep has thus been the focus of numerous genetic investigations (e.g. Livestock domestication is tightly intertwined with the evolution and welfare of human societies, contributing to the transition from a nomadic to sedentary lifestyle 1, 2, 3, 4. Our findings elucidate the key role of adaptive introgression in shaping the phenotypic features of modern cattle, aided by cultural and livestock exchange among historic human societies. The identified genes could provide genomic targets for selection for improved cattle performance. These findings suggest that indicine-derived traits helped enhance Central Italian cattle through adaptive introgression. We scrutinise local genomic introgression signals and identify genomic regions that have introgressed from indicine into taurine cattle under positive selection, harbouring genes with functions related to body size and feed efficiency. Based on local genomic ancestry analyses, we reconstruct taurine and indicine ancestry genome-wide and along chromosomes. Here we use genome-wide high-density SNP genotyping data to investigate the taurine and indicine ancestry in southern European cattle, based on a dataset comprising 508 individuals from 23 cattle breeds of taurine, indicine and mixed ancestry, including three breeds from Central Italy known to exhibit the highest levels of indicine introgression among southern European breeds. European cattle diversity is generally dominated by taurine cattle, although elevated levels of indicine ancestry have been recorded in several breeds from southern Europe. 9 Key Laboratory of Animal Genetics, Breeding and Reproduction of Shaanxi Province, College of Animal Science and Technology, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, Shaanxi, China.Cattle domestication occurred at least twice independently and gave rise to the modern taurine and indicine cattle breeds. 8 Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, Xi'an, China.9 Key Laboratory of Animal Genetics, Breeding and Reproduction of Shaanxi Province, College of Animal Science and Technology, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, Shaanxi, China.
![taurine cattle taurine cattle](https://66.media.tumblr.com/6cda5ba070ade83bf54deed517617105/tumblr_ote9cqc9Zb1qh92ooo2_500.jpg)
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4 The State Key Laboratory of Reproductive Regulation and Breeding of Grassland Livestock, School of Life Sciences, Inner Mongolia University, Hohhot, China.3 Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.Spallanzani", Università di Pavia, Pavia, Italy. 2 Dipartimento di Biologia e Biotecnologie "L.1 Key Laboratory of Animal Genetics, Breeding and Reproduction of Shaanxi Province, College of Animal Science and Technology, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, Shaanxi, China.