The African cattle provide unique genetic resources shaped up by both diverse tropical environmental conditions and human activities, the assessment of their genetic diversity will shade light on the mechanism of their remarkable adaptive capacities. We therefore analyzed the genetic diversity of cattle samples from Nigeria using both maternal and paternal DNA markers. Nigerian cattle can be assigned to 80 haplotypes based on the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) D-loop sequences and haplotype diversity was 0.985 + 0.005. The network showed two major matrilineal clustering: the dominant cluster constituting the Nigerian cattle together with other African cattle while the other clustered Eurasian cattle. Paternal analysis indicates only zebu haplogroup in Nigerian cattle with high genetic diversity 1.000 ± 0.016 compared to other cattle. There was no signal of maternal genetic structure in Nigerian cattle population, which may suggest an extensive genetic intermixing within the country. The absence of Bos indicus maternal signal in Nigerian cattle is attributable to vulnerability bottleneck of mtDNA lineages and concordance with the view of male zebu genetic introgression in African cattle. Our study shades light on the current genetic diversity in Nigerian cattle and population history in West Africa.
