Widespread male sex bias in mammal fossil and museum collections
A recent study of mammoth subfossil remains has demonstrated the potential of using relatively low-coverage high-throughput DNA sequencing to genetically sex specimens, revealing a strong male-biased sex ratio [P. Pečnerová et al., Curr. Biol. 27, 3505–3510.e3 (2017)]. Similar patterns were predicte...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:6754617 2023-05-15T18:42:07+02:00 Widespread male sex bias in mammal fossil and museum collections Gower, Graham Fenderson, Lindsey E. Salis, Alexander T. Helgen, Kristofer M. van Loenen, Ayla L. Heiniger, Holly Hofman-Kamińska, Emilia Kowalczyk, Rafał Mitchell, Kieren J. Llamas, Bastien Cooper, Alan 2019-09-17 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6754617/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31481609 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1903275116 en eng National Academy of Sciences http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6754617/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31481609 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1903275116 https://www.pnas.org/site/aboutpnas/licenses.xhtmlPublished under the PNAS license (https://www.pnas.org/site/aboutpnas/licenses.xhtml) . Biological Sciences Text 2019 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1903275116 2020-03-08T01:28:07Z A recent study of mammoth subfossil remains has demonstrated the potential of using relatively low-coverage high-throughput DNA sequencing to genetically sex specimens, revealing a strong male-biased sex ratio [P. Pečnerová et al., Curr. Biol. 27, 3505–3510.e3 (2017)]. Similar patterns were predicted for steppe bison, based on their analogous female herd-based structure. We genetically sexed subfossil remains of 186 Holarctic bison (Bison spp.), and also 91 brown bears (Ursus arctos), which are not female herd-based, and found that ∼75% of both groups were male, very close to the ratio observed in mammoths (72%). This large deviation from a 1:1 ratio was unexpected, but we found no evidence for sex differences with respect to DNA preservation, sample age, material type, or overall spatial distribution. We further examined ratios of male and female specimens from 4 large museum mammal collections and found a strong male bias, observable in almost all mammalian orders. We suggest that, in mammals at least, 1) wider male geographic ranges can lead to considerably increased chances of detection in fossil studies, and 2) sexual dimorphic behavior or appearance can facilitate a considerable sex bias in fossil and modern collections, on a previously unacknowledged scale. This finding has major implications for a wide range of studies of fossil and museum material. Text Ursus arctos PubMed Central (PMC) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116 38 19019 19024 |
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Biological Sciences |
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Biological Sciences Gower, Graham Fenderson, Lindsey E. Salis, Alexander T. Helgen, Kristofer M. van Loenen, Ayla L. Heiniger, Holly Hofman-Kamińska, Emilia Kowalczyk, Rafał Mitchell, Kieren J. Llamas, Bastien Cooper, Alan Widespread male sex bias in mammal fossil and museum collections |
topic_facet |
Biological Sciences |
description |
A recent study of mammoth subfossil remains has demonstrated the potential of using relatively low-coverage high-throughput DNA sequencing to genetically sex specimens, revealing a strong male-biased sex ratio [P. Pečnerová et al., Curr. Biol. 27, 3505–3510.e3 (2017)]. Similar patterns were predicted for steppe bison, based on their analogous female herd-based structure. We genetically sexed subfossil remains of 186 Holarctic bison (Bison spp.), and also 91 brown bears (Ursus arctos), which are not female herd-based, and found that ∼75% of both groups were male, very close to the ratio observed in mammoths (72%). This large deviation from a 1:1 ratio was unexpected, but we found no evidence for sex differences with respect to DNA preservation, sample age, material type, or overall spatial distribution. We further examined ratios of male and female specimens from 4 large museum mammal collections and found a strong male bias, observable in almost all mammalian orders. We suggest that, in mammals at least, 1) wider male geographic ranges can lead to considerably increased chances of detection in fossil studies, and 2) sexual dimorphic behavior or appearance can facilitate a considerable sex bias in fossil and modern collections, on a previously unacknowledged scale. This finding has major implications for a wide range of studies of fossil and museum material. |
format |
Text |
author |
Gower, Graham Fenderson, Lindsey E. Salis, Alexander T. Helgen, Kristofer M. van Loenen, Ayla L. Heiniger, Holly Hofman-Kamińska, Emilia Kowalczyk, Rafał Mitchell, Kieren J. Llamas, Bastien Cooper, Alan |
author_facet |
Gower, Graham Fenderson, Lindsey E. Salis, Alexander T. Helgen, Kristofer M. van Loenen, Ayla L. Heiniger, Holly Hofman-Kamińska, Emilia Kowalczyk, Rafał Mitchell, Kieren J. Llamas, Bastien Cooper, Alan |
author_sort |
Gower, Graham |
title |
Widespread male sex bias in mammal fossil and museum collections |
title_short |
Widespread male sex bias in mammal fossil and museum collections |
title_full |
Widespread male sex bias in mammal fossil and museum collections |
title_fullStr |
Widespread male sex bias in mammal fossil and museum collections |
title_full_unstemmed |
Widespread male sex bias in mammal fossil and museum collections |
title_sort |
widespread male sex bias in mammal fossil and museum collections |
publisher |
National Academy of Sciences |
publishDate |
2019 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6754617/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31481609 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1903275116 |
genre |
Ursus arctos |
genre_facet |
Ursus arctos |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6754617/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31481609 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1903275116 |
op_rights |
https://www.pnas.org/site/aboutpnas/licenses.xhtmlPublished under the PNAS license (https://www.pnas.org/site/aboutpnas/licenses.xhtml) . |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1903275116 |
container_title |
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |
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116 |
container_issue |
38 |
container_start_page |
19019 |
op_container_end_page |
19024 |
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1766231729862868992 |