Sample collection
A total of 256 samples (blood, muscle tissue, feathers or eggs) were collected from the UK, Greece and North Macedonia and used in the present analysis (Figure 1). Specifically, 61 (five sampling sites) and 56 samples from wild and farmed individuals respectively, were collected from the UK, 74 (five sampling sites) and 26 samples from wild and farmed individuals respectively, were collected from Greece and 16 samples from wild individuals (two sampling sites) were provided from North Macedonia (Table S1_ Appendix). A representative sample set from European populations previously published by (Liukkonen-Anttila et al. , 2002) was also provided by the University of Oulu (12 Finnish and five Greek individuals) and they were included in our analysis. Furthermore, six mixed-ancestry individuals, i.e. offsprings of mixed pairing between individuals of Western and Eastern origin, were analysed.