5) Domestication of the donkey in Africa.  Mitochondrial D-loop and cytb sequence is being generated from wild ass and donkey specimens collected from museums around the world. Questions include the origin and timing of donkey domestication in Africa.  This is a collaboration with Fiona Marshall (Washington University, St. Louis), who is PI of a NSF grant entitled “Domestication of the donkey: Aridity, mobility and the development of African pastoral societies”.  Marshall will conduct the faunal analyses, Albano Beja-Pereira (Portugal) will do genetic analyses of modern animals and Mulligan lab postdoctoral fellow Birgitta Kimura is conducting the ancient DNA analyses in our lab.