Abstract
Grey wolves (Canis lupus) are one of the few large terrestrial carnivores that have maintained a wide geographical distribution across the Northern Hemisphere throughout the Pleistocene and Holocene. Recent genetic studies have suggested that, despite this continuous presence, major demographic changes occurred in wolf populations between the Late Pleistocene and early Holocene, and that extant wolves trace their ancestry to a single Late Pleistocene population. Both the geographical origin of this ancestral population and how it became widespread remain unknown. Here, we used a spatially and temporally explicit modelling framework to analyse a data set of 90 modern and 45 ancient mitochondrial wolf genomes from across the Northern Hemisphere, spanning the last 50,000 years. Our results suggest that contemporary wolf populations trace their ancestry to an expansion from Beringia at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum, and that this process was most likely driven by Late Pleistocene ecological fluctuations that occurred across the Northern Hemisphere. This study provides direct ancient genetic evidence that long‐range migration has played an important role in the population history of a large carnivore, and provides insight into how wolves survived the wave of megafaunal extinctions at the end of the last glaciation. Moreover, because Late Pleistocene grey wolves were the likely source from which all modern dogs trace their origins, the demographic history described in this study has fundamental implications for understanding the geographical origin of the dog.
Highlights
The Pleistocene epoch harboured a large diversity of top predators, most became extinct during or soon after the Last GlacialMaximum (LGM), ~21,000 years ago (Barnosky, Koch, Feranec, Wing, & Shabel, 2004; Clark et al, 2012)
The formal integration of time and space into population genetics frameworks allows for the analysis of sparse data sets, a common challenge when dealing with ancient DNA (Loog et al, 2017)
We use a spatially explicit population genetic framework to model a range of different demographic histories of wolves across the Northern Hemisphere that involve combinations of population bottlenecks, turnover and long-range migrations as well as local gene flow
Summary
The Pleistocene epoch harboured a large diversity of top predators, most became extinct during or soon after the Last Glacial. To estimate model parameter and formally test hypotheses of the origin and population dynamics of the expansion of grey wolves during the LGM, we assembled a substantial data set (Figure 1; Table S1), spanning the last 50,000 years and the geographical breadth of the Northern Hemisphere. This data set consists of 90 modern and 45 ancient wolf whole mitochondrial genomes (38 of which are newly sequenced). We conclude with a discussion of how our findings relate to earlier studies and implications for future research
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