Ancient DNA suggests modern wolves trace their origin to a late Pleistocene expansion from Beringia. ...

Grey wolves (Canis lupus) are one of the few large terrestrial carnivores that have maintained a wide geographic distribution across the Northern Hemisphere throughout the Pleistocene and Holocene. Recent genetic studies have suggested that, despite this continuous presence, major demographic change...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Loog, Liisa, Thalmann, Olaf, Sinding, Mikkel-Holger S, Schuenemann, Verena J, Perri, Angela, Germonpré, Mietje, Bocherens, Herve, Witt, Kelsey E, Samaniego Castruita, Jose A, Velasco, Marcela S, Lundstrøm, Inge KC, Wales, Nathan, Sonet, Gontran, Frantz, Laurent, Schroeder, Hannes, Budd, Jane, Jimenez, Elodie-Laure, Fedorov, Sergey, Gasparyan, Boris, Kandel, Andrew W, Lázničková-Galetová, Martina, Napierala, Hannes, Uerpmann, Hans-Peter, Nikolskiy, Pavel A, Pavlova, Elena Y, Pitulko, Vladimir V, Herzig, Karl-Heinz, Malhi, Ripan S, Willerslev, Eske, Hansen, Anders J, Dobney, Keith, Gilbert, M Thomas P, Krause, Johannes, Larson, Greger, Eriksson, Anders, Manica, Andrea
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Wiley-Blackwell 2020
Subjects:
ABC
Ancient DNA
Coalescent modelling
Megafauna
Pleistocene
Population Turnover
Population structure
Wolves
Canis lupus
Beringia
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.47308
https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/300235
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Summary:Grey wolves (Canis lupus) are one of the few large terrestrial carnivores that have maintained a wide geographic distribution across the Northern Hemisphere throughout the Pleistocene and Holocene. Recent genetic studies have suggested that, despite this continuous presence, major demographic changes occurred in wolf populations between the late Pleistocene and early Holocene, and that extant wolves trace their ancestry to a single late Pleistocene population. Both the geographic origin of this ancestral population and how it became widespread remain unknown. Here, we used a spatially and temporally explicit modelling framework to analyse a dataset of 90 modern and 45 ancient mitochondrial wolf genomes from across the Northern Hemisphere, spanning the last 50,000 years. Our results suggest that contemporary wolf populations trace their ancestry to an expansion from Beringia at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum, and that this process was most likely driven by Late Pleistocene ecological fluctuations that ...

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