Ancient bears provide insights into Pleistocene ice age refugia in Southeast Alaska ...

• Main Authors: Da Silva Coelho, Flavio Augusto, Gill, Stephanie, Tomlin, Crystal, Papavassiliou, Marilena, Farley, Sean, Cook, Joseph, Sonsthagen, Sarah, Sage, George, Heaton, Timothy, Talbot, Sandra, Lindqvist, Charlotte
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2023
• Subjects: FOS Biological sciences; Last Glacial Maximum; Paleogenetics; refugia; Southeast Alaska; Ursus americanus; Ursus arctos; Archipelago; Alaska
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.brv15dvdk; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.brv15dvdk

During the Late Pleistocene, major parts of North America were periodically covered by ice sheets. However, there are still questions about whether ice-free refugia were present in the Alexander Archipelago along the Southeast (SE) Alaska coast during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Numerous subfossils have been recovered from caves in SE Alaska, including American black (Ursus americanus) and brown (U. arctos) bears, which today are found in the Alexander Archipelago but are genetically distinct from mainland bear populations. Hence, these bear species offer an ideal system to investigate long-term occupation, potential refugial survival, and lineage turnover. Here we present genetic analyses based on 99 new complete mitochondrial genomes from ancient and modern brown and black bears spanning the last ~45,000 years. Black bears form two SE Alaskan subclades that diverged >100,00 years ago, one preglacial and one postglacial. All postglacial ancient brown bears are closely related to modern brown bears in ...