Genome-wide patterns of homozygosity provide clues about the population history and adaptation of goats

Patterns of homozygosity can be influenced by several factors, such as demography, recombination, and selection. Using the goat SNP50 BeadChip, we genotyped 3171 goats belonging to 117 populations with a worldwide distribution. Our objectives were to characterize the number and length of runs of homozygosity (ROH) and to detect ROH hotspots in order to gain new insights into the consequences of neutral and selection processes on the genome-wide homozygosity patterns of goats. The proportion of the goat genome covered by ROH is, in general, less than 15% with an inverse relationship between ROH length and frequency i.e. short ROH (