Abstract
Native to southern Africa, the blue antelope (Hippotragus leucophaeus) is the only large African mammal species known to have become extinct in historical times. However, it was poorly documented prior to its extinction ~ 1800 AD, and many of the small number of museum specimens attributed to it are taxonomically contentious. This places limitations on our understanding of its morphology, ecology, and the mechanisms responsible for its demise. We retrieved genetic information from ten of the sixteen putative blue antelope museum specimens using both shotgun sequencing and mitochondrial genome target capture in an attempt to resolve the uncertainty surrounding the identification of these specimens. We found that only four of the ten investigated specimens, and not a single skull, represent the blue antelope. This indicates that the true number of historical museum specimens of the blue antelope is even smaller than previously thought, and therefore hardly any reference material is available for morphometric, comparative and genetic studies. Our study highlights how genetics can be used to identify rare species in natural history collections where other methods may fail or when records are scarce. Additionally, we present an improved mitochondrial reference genome for the blue antelope as well as one complete and two partial mitochondrial genomes. A first analysis of these mitochondrial genomes indicates low levels of maternal genetic diversity in the ‘museum population’, possibly confirming previous results that blue antelope population size was already low at the time of the European colonization of South Africa.
Highlights
Native to southern Africa, the blue antelope (Hippotragus leucophaeus) is the only large African mammal species known to have become extinct in historical times
The blue antelope, Hippotragus leucophaeus (Pallas, 1766), is the first and only large African mammal species to become extinct in historical times[1,2] (Fig. 1a)
We present a first preliminary estimate of the genetic diversity of the blue antelope ’museum population’ by comparing two complete and two partial blue antelope mitochondrial genomes
Summary
Native to southern Africa, the blue antelope (Hippotragus leucophaeus) is the only large African mammal species known to have become extinct in historical times. Kerley et al.[16] found that its population size was already small (about 370 individuals) with a small distribution range, and that the species was highly vulnerable at the time of European colonization (mid-seventeenth century). These authors concluded that hunting by European colonists drove the blue antelope to extinction, but that it was not the only force leading to its demise. The knowledge of the blue antelope’s evolutionary history and ecology is very limited and originates from just a few early and, as was common at the time, anecdotal travel reports, the archaeological and paleontological records, and deductions from observations of its extant congeners, the roan (H. equinus) and the sable (H. niger), both of which were described later (in 1803 and 1838, respectively)
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