Historical Demographic Processes Dominate Genetic Variation in Ancient Atlantic Cod Mitogenomes ...

• Main Authors: Martínez-García, L, Ferrari, G, Oosting, T, Ballantyne, R, Van Der Jagt, I, Ystgaard, I, Harland, J, Nicholson, R, Hamilton-Dyer, S, Baalsrud, HT, Brieuc, MSO, Atmore, LM, Burns, F, Schmölcke, U, Jakobsen, KS, Jentoft, S, Orton, D, Hufthammer, AK, Barrett, JH, Star, B
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media SA 2021
• Subjects: population structure; fisheries; human exploitation; phylogenomics; population expansion; demographic history; atlantic cod; Gadus morhua; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.71522; https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/324064

Ancient DNA (aDNA) approaches have been successfully used to infer the long-term impacts of climate change, domestication, and human exploitation in a range of terrestrial species. Nonetheless, studies investigating such impacts using aDNA in marine species are rare. Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua), is an economically important species that has experienced dramatic census population declines during the last century. Here, we investigated 48 ancient mitogenomes from historical specimens obtained from a range of archeological excavations in northern Europe dated up to 6,500 BCE. We compare these mitogenomes to those of 496 modern conspecifics sampled across the North Atlantic Ocean and adjacent seas. Our results confirm earlier observations of high levels of mitogenomic variation and a lack of mutation-drift equilibrium—suggestive of population expansion. Furthermore, our temporal comparison yields no evidence of measurable mitogenomic changes through time. Instead, our results indicate that mitogenomic variation ...