SHORT COMMUNICATION: A phantom extinction? New insights into extinction dynamics of the Don‐hare Lepus tanaiticus

• Published in: Journal of Evolutionary Biology
• Main Authors: PROST, S., KNAPP, M., FLEMMIG, J., HUFTHAMMER, A. K., KOSINTSEV, P., STILLER, M., HOFREITER, M.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2010
• Subjects: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics; Lepus timidus; mountain hare
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1420-9101.2010.02062.x; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2Fj.1420-9101.2010.02062.x; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1420-9101.2010.02062.x

Abstract The Pleistocene to Holocene transition was accompanied by a worldwide extinction event affecting numerous mammalian species. Several species such as the woolly mammoth and the giant deer survived this extinction wave, only to go extinct a few thousand years later during the Holocene. Another example for such a Holocene extinction is the Don‐hare, Lepus tanaiticus , which inhabited the Russian plains during the late glacial. After being slowly replaced by the extant mountain hare ( Lepus timidus ), it eventually went extinct during the middle Holocene. Here, we report the phylogenetic relationship of L. tanaiticus and L. timidus based on a 339‐basepair (bp) fragment of the mitochondrial D‐loop. Phylogenetic tree‐ and network reconstructions do not support L. tanaiticus and L. timidus being different species. Rather, we suggest that the two taxa represent different morphotypes of a single species and the extinction of ‘ L. tanaiticus ’ represents the disappearance of a local morphotype rather than the extinction of a species.