Extended and Continuous Decline in Effective Population Size Results in Low Genomic Diversity in the World's Rarest Hyena Species, the Brown Hyena.

ABSTRACT: Hyenas (family Hyaenidae), as the sister group to cats (family Felidae), represent a deeply diverging branch within the cat-like carnivores (Feliformia). With an estimated population size of <10,000 individuals worldwide, the brown hyena (Parahyaena brunnea) represents the rarest of the four extant hyena species and has been listed as Near Threatened by the IUCN. Here, we report a high-coverage genome from a captive bred brown hyena and both mitochondrial and low-coverage nuclear genomes of 14 wild-caught brown hyena individuals from across southern Africa. We find that brown hyena harbor extremely low genetic diversity on both the mitochondrial and nuclear level, most likely resulting from a continuous and ongoing decline in effective population size that started ∼1 Ma and dramatically ac

SUBMITTER: Westbury MV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5913678 | biostudies-literature | 2018 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature