TY - JOUR
T1 - Ancient horse genomes reveal the timing and extent of dispersals across the Bering Land Bridge
AU - Vershinina, Alisa O.
AU - Heintzman, Peter D.
AU - Froese, Duane G.
AU - Zazula, Grant
AU - Cassatt-Johnstone, Molly
AU - Dalén, Love
AU - Der Sarkissian, Clio
AU - Dunn, Shelby G.
AU - Ermini, Luca
AU - Gamba, Cristina
AU - Groves, Pamela
AU - Kapp, Joshua D.
AU - Mann, Daniel H.
AU - Seguin-Orlando, Andaine
AU - Southon, John
AU - Stiller, Mathias
AU - Wooller, Matthew J.
AU - Baryshnikov, Gennady
AU - Gimranov, Dmitry
AU - Scott, Eric
AU - Hall, Elizabeth
AU - Hewitson, Susan
AU - Kirillova, Irina
AU - Kosintsev, Pavel
AU - Shidlovsky, Fedor
AU - Tong, Hao Wen
AU - Tiunov, Mikhail P.
AU - Vartanyan, Sergey
AU - Orlando, Ludovic
AU - Corbett-Detig, Russell
AU - MacPhee, Ross D.
AU - Shapiro, Beth
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
PY - 2021/12
Y1 - 2021/12
N2 - The Bering Land Bridge (BLB) last connected Eurasia and North America during the Late Pleistocene. Although the BLB would have enabled transfers of terrestrial biota in both directions, it also acted as an ecological filter whose permeability varied considerably over time. Here we explore the possible impacts of this ecological corridor on genetic diversity within, and connectivity among, populations of a once wide-ranging group, the caballine horses (Equus spp.). Using a panel of 187 mitochondrial and eight nuclear genomes recovered from present-day and extinct caballine horses sampled across the Holarctic, we found that Eurasian horse populations initially diverged from those in North America, their ancestral continent, around 1.0–0.8 million years ago. Subsequent to this split our mitochondrial DNA analysis identified two bidirectional long-range dispersals across the BLB ~875–625 and ~200–50 thousand years ago, during the Middle and Late Pleistocene. Whole genome analysis indicated low levels of gene flow between North American and Eurasian horse populations, which probably occurred as a result of these inferred dispersals. Nonetheless, mitochondrial and nuclear diversity of caballine horse populations retained strong phylogeographical structuring. Our results suggest that barriers to gene flow, currently unidentified but possibly related to habitat distribution across Beringia or ongoing evolutionary divergence, played an important role in shaping the early genetic history of caballine horses, including the ancestors of living horses within Equus ferus.
AB - The Bering Land Bridge (BLB) last connected Eurasia and North America during the Late Pleistocene. Although the BLB would have enabled transfers of terrestrial biota in both directions, it also acted as an ecological filter whose permeability varied considerably over time. Here we explore the possible impacts of this ecological corridor on genetic diversity within, and connectivity among, populations of a once wide-ranging group, the caballine horses (Equus spp.). Using a panel of 187 mitochondrial and eight nuclear genomes recovered from present-day and extinct caballine horses sampled across the Holarctic, we found that Eurasian horse populations initially diverged from those in North America, their ancestral continent, around 1.0–0.8 million years ago. Subsequent to this split our mitochondrial DNA analysis identified two bidirectional long-range dispersals across the BLB ~875–625 and ~200–50 thousand years ago, during the Middle and Late Pleistocene. Whole genome analysis indicated low levels of gene flow between North American and Eurasian horse populations, which probably occurred as a result of these inferred dispersals. Nonetheless, mitochondrial and nuclear diversity of caballine horse populations retained strong phylogeographical structuring. Our results suggest that barriers to gene flow, currently unidentified but possibly related to habitat distribution across Beringia or ongoing evolutionary divergence, played an important role in shaping the early genetic history of caballine horses, including the ancestors of living horses within Equus ferus.
KW - Bering Land Bridge
KW - Equus ferus
KW - horses
KW - palaeogenomics
KW - population structure
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85106565951&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/mec.15977
DO - 10.1111/mec.15977
M3 - Article
C2 - 33971056
AN - SCOPUS:85106565951
SN - 0962-1083
VL - 30
SP - 6144
EP - 6161
JO - Molecular Ecology
JF - Molecular Ecology
IS - 23
ER -