Arctic-adapted dogs emerged at the Pleistocene-Holocene transition
Although sled dogs are one of the most specialized groups of dogs, their origin and evolution has received much less attention than many other dog groups. We applied a genomic approach to investigate their spatiotemporal emergence by sequencing the genomes of 10 modern Greenland sled dogs, an ~9500-...
| Published in: | Science |
|---|---|
| Main Authors: | , , , |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10230/56625 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaz8599 |
| Summary: | Although sled dogs are one of the most specialized groups of dogs, their origin and evolution has received much less attention than many other dog groups. We applied a genomic approach to investigate their spatiotemporal emergence by sequencing the genomes of 10 modern Greenland sled dogs, an ~9500-year-old Siberian dog associated with archaeological evidence for sled technology, and an ~33,000-year-old Siberian wolf. We found noteworthy genetic similarity between the ancient dog and modern sled dogs. We detected gene flow from Pleistocene Siberian wolves, but not modern American wolves, to present-day sled dogs. The results indicate that the major ancestry of modern sled dogs traces back to Siberia, where sled dog-specific haplotypes of genes that potentially relate to Arctic adaptation were established by 9500 years ago. This work is embedded in “The Qimmeq Project,” funded by the Velux Foundations and Aage og Johanne Louis-Hansens Fond, and supported by ArchSci2020, funded by the European Union’s EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 under Marie Curie Actions grant no. 676154. We thank the Rock Foundation of New York for funding excavations at the Zhokhov and Yana sites in a 15-year-long effort starting in 2000. M.-H.S.S. was supported by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (8028-00005B) and NHM Oslo. S.G. was supported by Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (H2020 655732 - WhereWolf) and Carlsberg (CF14 - 0995). M.d.M.M. was supported by a Formació de Personal Investigador fellowship from Generalitat de Catalunya (FI_B01111). V.V.P., E.Y.P., and P.A.N. were supported by the Russian Science Foundation project no. 16-18-10265-RNF. T.M.B. was supported by BFU2017-86471-P (MINECO/FEDER, UE), Howard Hughes International Early Career, Obra Social “La Caixa” and Secretaria d’Universitats i Recerca and CERCA Programme del Departament d’Economia i Coneixement de la Generalitat de Catalunya (GRC 2017 SGR 880). M.T.P.G. was supported by a European Research Council grant ... |
|---|