Friday, October 4, 2024

Swedish study: Scandinavian wolves are genetically pure

 Research (link)  shows that Scandinavian wolves are racially pure and have not mixed with dogs. According to the study, canine hydridism is a problem elsewhere in Europe. A Swedish study states that the Scandinavian wolves are of eastern origin and that the origin of the migration was Finland and Karelia in Russia. Wolves clearly more eastern than this belong to a different stock and the Chinese wolf turns out to be a hybrid. Pure wolf populations can also be found in North America.


The research is methodologically convincing. The selection of material for individual tests has been successful, considering the small size of wolf populations in Fennoscandinavia. Among other things, efforts have been made to eliminate the influence of close relatives on the results.  The effect of small populations is still clear in the PCA plots,  it would have been impossible to avoid totally.  It would have been good to eliminate relatives also in research when searching for the origin of Finnish Homo Sapiens. Of course, the scientific objective attitude is probably easier to follow in the case of wolves than in the case of linguistic and state institutions.

Thursday, October 3, 2024

New Russian study about the Finnish ancestry in Russia

 Research (link) shows that Finnish heritage (IBD based) is common among Russians. Unfortunately other Finno-Ugric-speaking peoples, such as Komi and Volga Uralics, have not been included in the study. By adding these, we would get a better picture of the origin of this gene. Now the gradient indicates a Finnish origin, which is unlikely. It is also noteworthy that the IBD distribution shows that Finns have more West and Central European heritage than Russians.


The second figure describes the population bottleneck effect (effective population as a function of time). These tests are, in my experience, very unreliable, as are all tests of drift in supposed historical populations. Based on the current population structure, it is not possible to say what the population structures were like in prehistoric times. The drifts and their areas of influence have been different in different times.  This way, there could have been several regional subpopulations, bottlenecks and expansion times  at different times. This method is not suitable for historical research. Now only averages and evaluations are obtained in the test.  I was hoping for a larger number of populations in this case as well.