A case of multiple assignments (paternity/maternity) in an equine out breeding system

VILLEGAS CASTAGNASSO E.E.; KIENAST M.E.; PERAL GARCÍA P.; GIOVAMBATTISTA G.

Journal Forensic Science

Blackwell

Año: 2007 vol. 52 p. 889 - 890

0022-1198

 Over the past thirty years, domestic animals have been identified by tattoo and phenotypic description, blood typing and biochemical polymorphisms. Recently, the use of DNA markers has provided a more accurate method of identifying individuals and verifying parentage. In this report, we describe foal assignment in a farm bred jumping horses (Silla Argentino).[u1]  Ten mares were freely served by two stallions, resulting in nine foals. Weaning occurred without registration of the mare of each offspring, resulting in a failure to identify either the mare or the sire of each foal. Animals were typed using twelve microsatellite systems and four biochemical polymorphisms in order to determine the paternity/maternity of each foal. We used the CERVUS program to evaluate the parentage of each offspring. It was possible to determine maternity in eight cases, and paternity in all of them. We concluded that this set of co dominant markers analized following a  likelihood-based approach, included in the CERVUS package, are useful tools to solve parentage assignments in domestic horse