The complete mitochondrial DNA sequence of the Montecristo goat Maria Grazia Doro a , Giuseppina Casu a , Giovanni Giuseppe Leoni b , Salvatore Naitana b , Mario Pirastu a , Andrea Novelletto c,n , Fulvio Fraticelli d a Institute of Genetics and Biomedical Research - UOS Sassari, National Research Council (CNR), Sassari, Italy b Faculty of Veterinary Sciences, University of Sassari, Sassari, Italy c Department of Biology, University “Tor Vergata”, Rome, Italy d Fondazione Bioparco di Roma, Rome, Italy article info Article history: Received 19 June 2015 Received in revised form 14 April 2016 Accepted 17 April 2016 Keywords: Goat dispersal Bezoar Mediterranean islands Isolated populations abstract The remote island of Montecristo is renowned for a resident goat population, whose origins are unclear. We describe the complete mtDNA sequence of a male specimen captured on the island. The sequence turned out to belong to haplogroup (Hg) A. Our results exclude that the sequence belongs to a lineage more closely related to bezoars than domestic goats. The lineages most similar to the Montecristo se- quence are currently found in Western Europe, favouring partial feralization for the Montecristo isolate. Positioning of the Montecristo mitogenome in the emerging phylogenetic tree for domestic goats reveals a new lineage with multiple derived nucleotide states shared with lineages so far described in Europe as well as in North Asian breeds. This reveals the presence, within Hg A, of lineages with a palearctic distribution, whose descendants are now grown from Eastern Asia to Western Europe. & 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The remote island of Montecristo (42°20′N; 10°19′E) has an area of 10 km 2 and is located in the Thyrrenian sea, midway be- tween the mainland Italian coast and the French island of Corsica. Among other aspects, the island is renowned for its resident goat population, currently numbering to 200–250 heads. However, the origins of this population are unclear. While some scholars maintain that goats were introduced as a food resource for a monk community settled in the island from the 7th to the 16th century C.E., others favour a more ancient introduction (Masseti, 2009). Partial additions to the extant population in the late 19th century are documented, when the island served as a game reserve. Today the island is a protected area and is subjected to actions aimed at the eradication of some invasive species (http://www.mon tecristo2010.it/index.asp). The goat population of Montecristo is interesting for several inter-related aspects. On one hand, the animals exhibit phenotypic traits that resemble domestic goats, such as a relatively small size, the body length/height at the withers ratio, and a wide variability of coat colors. On the other hand, other traits are reminiscent of the bezoar (Capra aegagrus) and other semi-wild goat populations of the Mediterranean area, such as the Cretan Agrimi goat (C. ae- gagrus cretica). The horns have a marked variability in shape (more prominent in males), with two basic types: a scimitar-shaped type, that bends backward with a modest basal angle, width at tip, and a narrow cross-sectional shape on which irregular longitudinal lumps develop with age, like the horns of the Agrimi goat (Ciani and Masseti, 1991), and a second type with more pronounced lateral growth and width at tip, similar to the horns of some do- mestic breeds (Spagnesi et al., 1986). These features then raise questions on the source population from which the founders of the Montecristo isolate were drawn, the timing of the first in- troduction(s) being also a potentially relevant information. In fact, possible observations favouring antiquity of the population would bear to the understanding of human maritime movements across the Mediterranean, which brought portable farm animals from the early domestication centres of the Middle East westward, to many large islands with stable human settlements. In this work, we describe the complete mtDNA sequence of a male specimen captured on the island and translocated to the Rome zoo. We provide evidence that the presence of this sequence in Montecristo is the result of feralization from a pool of domestic matrilines. In addition, positioning of this sequence in the emer- ging phylogenetic tree for domestic goats (Luikart et al., 2001; Piras et al., 2012; Doro et al., 2014; Colli et al., 2015) reveals the spread of a lineage with multiple derived nucleotide states shared with lineages so far described also in North Asian breeds (Nomura Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/livsci Livestock Science http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.livsci.2016.04.011 1871-1413/& 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. n Correspondence to: Department of Biology, University “Tor Vergata”, via Ricerca Scientifica 1, 00133 Rome, Italy. E-mail address: novelletto@bio.uniroma2.it (A. Novelletto). Livestock Science 188 (2016) 120–123