Abstract
The major climatic oscillations that characterized the Quaternary had a great influence on the evolution and distribution of several species. During cold periods, the distribution of temperate‐adapted species became fragmented with many surviving in southern refugia (Iberian, Italian, and Balkan Peninsulas). Red deer was one of the species that contracted its original range to southern refugia. Currently, two main lineages have been described for the species: western and eastern. We have analyzed fossils pre‐dating the last glacial maximum (LGM) from Liñares cave (NW Spain) that belongs to the peripheral range of the western clade, and fossils from the Danish Holocene belonging to the central part of the same clade. Phylogenetic analyses place our samples in the western clade. However, some specimens from Liñares represent an early split in the tree along with other pre‐LGM western samples from previous studies. Despite low bootstrap values in the Bayesian phylogenies, haplotype networks connect these foreign haplotypes to the eastern clade. We suggest a mixed phylogeographical model to explain this pattern with range expansions from the east during the expansion phase after the cold periods in marine isotope stage 3. We find slight isolation by distance in post‐LGM populations that could be a consequence of the recolonization from southern refugia after the LGM.
Highlights
Over the past ca. 2 million years, Earth has undergone drastic climatic oscillations (Provan & Bennett, 2008) influencing the evolution and distribution of several megafauna species (e.g., Campos et al, 2010; Hewitt, 1996; Hofreiter et al, 2004; Lister, 2004; Shapiro et al, 2004)
In order to gain more understanding of the genetic composition pre-d ating the glacial period in Spain, we have studied specimens from Liñares cave (NW Spain)
The Spanish pre- last glacial maximum (LGM) data suggest that the phylogeographical model for the species before the LGM was more complex than previously assumed and might not be only explained by lack of phylogeographical structure (Meiri et al, 2013; Niedziałkowska et al, 2011) as it has been hypothesized
Summary
Over the past ca. 2 million years, Earth has undergone drastic climatic oscillations (Provan & Bennett, 2008) influencing the evolution and distribution of several megafauna species (e.g., Campos et al, 2010; Hewitt, 1996; Hofreiter et al, 2004; Lister, 2004; Shapiro et al, 2004). Temperate species distributions became fragmented and often limited to southern refugia like the Iberian, Italian, and Balkan Peninsulas in Europe. Red deer fossils have been found in several habitats (Lister, 1984), suggesting that the species has a broad tolerance to different conditions (Sommer et al, 2008). This may have enabled red deer to benefit from the landscape changes brought about by glaciations, deglaciations, megafaunal extinctions, and, in recent times, human disturbance
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