Ecological regions give rise to goats with morphological
features that enable them to be classed as breeds by the
local people. The genetic differentiation between four different
goat ecotypes in Namibia was found to be relatively
low, 0.11, which partly supports the phenotypic differences
between these ecotypes. The four ecotypes seem to
have evolved to suit their distinct environments and the
heterozygosis values indicate sufficient genetic variation
with the range being from 0.60 to 0.71. The genetic distance
between geographically close ecotypes was 0.12 and
between two geographically distant breeds, the Kalahari
Red that had evolved on the dry hot plains of the Northern
Cape and the goat of the tropical Caprivi in the north of
Namibia, was 0.44 (Els et al., 2004).