Revealing the maternal demographic history of Panthera leo using ancient DNA and a spatially explicit genealogical analysis.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Understanding the demographic history of a population is critical to conservation and to our broader understanding of evolutionary processes. For many tropical large mammals, however, this aim is confounded by the absence of fossil material and by the misleading signal obtained from genetic data of recently fragmented and isolated populations. This is particularly true for the lion which as a consequence of millennia of human persecution, has large gaps in its natural distribution and several recently extinct populations.

Results

We sequenced mitochondrial DNA from museum-preserved individuals, including the extinct Barbary lion (Panthera leo leo) and Iranian lion (P. l. persica), as well as lions from West and Central Africa. We added these to a broader sample of

SUBMITTER: Barnett R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3997813 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature