Genomic reconstruction reveals impact of population management strategies on modern Galápagos dogs.

Free-breeding dogs have occupied the Galápagos Islands at least since the 1830s; however, it was not until the 1900s that dog populations grew substantially, endangering wildlife and spreading disease. In 1981, efforts to control the population size of free-roaming dogs began. Yet, there exist large free-roaming dog populations on the islands of Isabela and Santa Cruz whose ancestry has never been assessed on a genome-wide scale.

Imputation of ancient canid genomes reveals inbreeding history over the past 10,000 years.

The multi-millenia long history between dogs and humans has placed them at the forefront of archeological and genomic research. Despite ongoing efforts including the analysis of ancient dog and wolf genomes, many questions remain regarding their geographic and temporal origins, and the microevolutionary processes that led to the diversity of breeds today. Although ancient genomes provide valuable information, their use is hindered by low depth of coverage and post-mortem damage, which inhibits confident genotype calling.

The history of Coast Salish "woolly dogs" revealed by ancient genomics and Indigenous Knowledge.

Ancestral Coast Salish societies in the Pacific Northwest kept long-haired "woolly dogs" that were bred and cared for over millennia. However, the dog wool-weaving tradition declined during the 19th century, and the population was lost. In this study, we analyzed genomic and isotopic data from a preserved woolly dog pelt from "Mutton," collected in 1859.

Modern Siberian dog ancestry was shaped by several thousand years of Eurasian-wide trade and human dispersal.

Dogs have been essential to life in the Siberian Arctic for over 9,500 y, and this tight link between people and dogs continues in Siberian communities. Although Arctic Siberian groups such as the Nenets received limited gene flow from neighboring groups, archaeological evidence suggests that metallurgy and new subsistence strategies emerged in Northwest Siberia around 2,000 y ago. It is unclear if the Siberian Arctic dog population was as continuous as the people of the region or if instead admixture occurred, possibly in relation to the influx of material culture from other parts of Eurasia.

A refined proposal for the origin of dogs: the case study of Gnirshöhle, a Magdalenian cave site.

Dogs are known to be the oldest animals domesticated by humans. Although many studies have examined wolf domestication, the geographic and temporal origin of this process is still being debated. To address this issue, our study sheds new light on the early stages of wolf domestication during the Magdalenian period (16-14 ka cal BP) in the Hegau Jura region (Southwestern Germany and Switzerland).

Dog domestication and the dual dispersal of people and dogs into the Americas.

Advances in the isolation and sequencing of ancient DNA have begun to reveal the population histories of both people and dogs. Over the last 10,000 y, the genetic signatures of ancient dog remains have been linked with known human dispersals in regions such as the Arctic and the remote Pacific. It is suspected, however, that this relationship has a much deeper antiquity, and that the tandem movement of people and dogs may have begun soon after the domestication of the dog from a gray wolf ancestor in the late Pleistocene.

Competitive mapping allows for the identification and exclusion of human DNA contamination in ancient faunal genomic datasets.

Background: After over a decade of developments in field collection, laboratory methods and advances in high-throughput sequencing, contamination remains a key issue in ancient DNA research. Currently, human and microbial contaminant DNA still impose challenges on cost-effective sequencing and accurate interpretation of ancient DNA data.

Results: Here we investigate whether human contaminating DNA can be found in ancient faunal sequencing datasets.

Genomes of Pleistocene Siberian Wolves Uncover Multiple Extinct Wolf Lineages.

Extant Canis lupus genetic diversity can be grouped into three phylogenetically distinct clades: Eurasian and American wolves and domestic dogs. Genetic studies have suggested these groups trace their origins to a wolf population that expanded during the last glacial maximum (LGM) and replaced local wolf populations. Moreover, ancient genomes from the Yana basin and the Taimyr peninsula provided evidence of at least one extinct wolf lineage that dwelled in Siberia during the Pleistocene.

Arctic-adapted dogs emerged at the Pleistocene-Holocene transition.

Although sled dogs are one of the most specialized groups of dogs, their origin and evolution has received much less attention than many other dog groups. We applied a genomic approach to investigate their spatiotemporal emergence by sequencing the genomes of 10 modern Greenland sled dogs, an ~9500-year-old Siberian dog associated with archaeological evidence for sled technology, and an ~33,000-year-old Siberian wolf. We found noteworthy genetic similarity between the ancient dog and modern sled dogs.

Specialized sledge dogs accompanied Inuit dispersal across the North American Arctic.

Domestic dogs have been central to life in the North American Arctic for millennia. The ancestors of the Inuit were the first to introduce the widespread usage of dog sledge transportation technology to the Americas, but whether the Inuit adopted local Palaeo-Inuit dogs or introduced a new dog population to the region remains unknown. To test these hypotheses, we generated mitochondrial DNA and geometric morphometric data of skull and dental elements from a total of 922 North American Arctic dogs and wolves spanning over 4500 years.

An Ultra High-Density Crossover Map That Refines the Influences of Structural Variation and Epigenetic Features.

Many environmental, genetic, and epigenetic factors are known to affect the frequency and positioning of meiotic crossovers (COs). Suppression of COs by large, cytologically visible inversions and translocations has long been recognized, but relatively little is known about how smaller structural variants (SVs) affect COs. To examine fine-scale determinants of the CO landscape, including SVs, we used a rapid, cost-effective method for high-throughput sequencing to generate a precise map of >17,000 COs between the Col-0 and L accessions of COs were generally suppressed in regions with SVs, but this effect did not depend on the size of the variant region, and was only marginally affected by the variant type.

Genome-Based Sexing Provides Clues about Behavior and Social Structure in the Woolly Mammoth.

While present-day taxa are valuable proxies for understanding the biology of extinct species, it is also crucial to examine physical remains in order to obtain a more comprehensive view of their behavior, social structure, and life histories [1, 2]. For example, information on demographic parameters such as age distribution and sex ratios in fossil assemblages can be used to accurately infer socioecological patterns (e.g.