Domestic cattle were brought to Spain by early settlers and agricultural societies. Due to missing Neolithic sites in the Spanish region of Galicia, very little is known about this process in this region. We sampled 18 cattle subfossils from different ages and different mountain caves in Galicia, of which 11 were subject to sequencing of the mitochondrial genome and phylogenetic analysis, to provide insight into the introduction of cattle to this region.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDisentangling the contribution of long-term evolutionary processes and recent anthropogenic impacts to current genetic patterns of wildlife species is key to assessing genetic risks and designing conservation strategies. Here, we used 80 whole nuclear genomes and 96 mitogenomes from populations of the Eurasian lynx covering a range of conservation statuses, climatic zones and subspecies across Eurasia to infer the demographic history, reconstruct genetic patterns, and discuss the influence of long-term isolation and/or more recent human-driven changes. Our results show that Eurasian lynx populations shared a common history until 100,000 years ago, when Asian and European populations started to diverge and both entered a period of continuous and widespread decline, with western populations, except Kirov, maintaining lower effective sizes than eastern populations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRetracing complex population processes that precede extreme bottlenecks may be impossible using data from living individuals. The wisent (Bison bonasus), Europe's largest terrestrial mammal, exemplifies such a population history, having gone extinct in the wild but subsequently restored by captive breeding efforts. Using low coverage genomic data from modern and historical individuals, we investigate population processes occurring before and after this extinction.
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