Wild & genetics
Landrace
A local population shaped over generations by climate, terrain and the job it does, rather than by a written standard and a closed studbook.
Landraces came first. Before anyone wrote a breed standard, dogs and cats in a region converged on a type because the ones that suited the work and the weather were the ones that got bred. The result is consistent in the ways that mattered locally and variable in the ways that did not, which is the opposite of how a modern show breed is assembled.
Plenty of recognised breeds are landraces that were later formalised, and something is always lost in the conversion: the studbook closes, the gene pool becomes finite, and selection shifts from what the dog can do to what it looks like.
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More in Wild & genetics
HybridisationBreeding between two distinct populations or species — the main threat to wildcats, because a wildcat that breeds with a domestic cat leaves offspring that are neither.IntrogressionGenes moving from one population into another and staying there, carried in by hybrids that go on to breed back with the parent population.TNRHumanely trapping free-roaming cats, neutering and ear-tipping them, and returning them to where they were found instead of removing or killing them.FeralA domestic animal living wild — descended from domesticated stock, unsocialised to people, and genetically still a domestic animal rather than a wild species.DomesticationThe long genetic change that turns a wild population into one adapted to living alongside people — distinct from taming, which happens to an individual.Coefficient of inbreedingThe probability that an animal inherited two identical copies of a gene from a shared ancestor — a single number for how closely related its parents were.